6 COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE AND DAIRYING 
are all right, but I claim that it will be just as warm if the floor was of wood or paved 
with stone. 
A. If paved with stone, yes. 
Q. I have my cattle stables paved with stone and see no difference in the result. 
When I had a cement floor put in I did not see that the cement makes any difference. 
If the stable is warm otherwise I cannot see that it makes much ditterence what 
material a floor is made of. 
A. Let me make one more statement. In carrying on winter dairying it becomes 
necessary to have the stable kept clean and kept clean permanently. I have had stables 
with a wooden floor and I have found, like every one else, that one of the difficulties 
is to save the liquid manure and to keep the stable in a thoroughly sanitary condition. 
It is all right if you are only fattening the cattle; but if you are using them for dairy 
purposes the stable must be kept absolutely clean. When we made the discovery, it 
was to me a revelation, that in a climate like ours the temperature should never go 
below 40 degrees in these unoccupied big buildings without heating. I said to our live 
stock commissioner lately, ‘I want you to look out for three cattle stables and arrange 
for a real investigation and object lesson along this line” Next winter we hope to 
have these in different parts of the country, where a comparison can be made with 
thermographs running in the stables, one stable with an ordinary floor and one with a 
cement floor. This can be arranged without any expense to three farmers who want to 
improve their stables and who are willing to keep these thermographs in the stables 
under the different conditions, giving us a record of the results. 
Mr. SprouLe.—Don’t you find the cement floors arg often detrimental to cattle 
owing to their slippery condition ? 
Mr. Erp.—That depends on how they are finished; you can get them rough finished. 
By Mr. Sproule: 
Q. You want to get them very rough finished. 
A. The passages should be rough finished and the gutters quite smooth. Let me 
make one further observation before we leave this matter. There was an idea that 
cement floors conduced to rheumatism in cattle. I know it has been claimed that this 
has occurred in the case of pigs, but I do not think there is any ground for saying that 
anything of that character affects cattle owing to their stables having cement floors. 
By Mr. Erb: 
Q. All people who keep cement floors have put lumber on top after using them 
for some time without wood. 
A. I know one stable used for pigs where they have the sleeping place floored with 
wood over the cement, but it is the sleeping place only; the other part of the floor is 
without wood, and by this means your pig pen is-easily kept clean. 
IMPROVEMENT OF SEEDS AND SEED GROWERS’ ASSOCIATIONS. 
Mr. Chairman, the matters I propose to bring before the Committee this morning 
are on the improvement of seeds and the organization of seed growers’ associations in 
Canada for the purpose of improving the grain crops of the country. In growing 
crops—if I put in a parenthesis here and there I shall not detain the Committea long 
by preliminary explanations—in growing crops two main matters are important: first 
the ease or difficulty with which the plants can obtain their food from the soil and from 
the air—in other words, the environment of the plant, or its opportunities; the other 
main matter is the power of the individual plant to take in, absorb and assimilate 
food from the soil and the air—the power to overcome obstacles, the personal ability of 
the plant to do things in its own environment. I need not say that these two pans 
principles condition our progress—opportunity and personal power. Even in famian 
progress the principles are persistent; and governments are concerned with these, with 
