1865.] Agriculture. 435 



afterwards to the maintenance of its fertility as regards every sepa- 

 rate crop by the application of the special or dominant ingredient of 

 the complete manure in which that crop makes the largest and most 

 severe demands. It is not, however, so much by this latter particular 

 treatment, as by the former general treatment that English farmers 

 aim at the maintenance of fertility. It is an agricultural, not a 

 purely chemical question, of which their practice is the true exponent. 

 And the principal and leading explanation of an increasing fertility 

 whenever over any considerable district in the country it is witnessed, 

 exists in the maintenance of an increased head of stock upon a given 

 area. Fortunately for English farming and for English soils, the 

 relative state of the meat and corn market has of late more especially 

 urged this as his interest upon the English farmer ; and the purchase 

 of sheep and cattle foods — both cakes, the refuse of the oil manufacture 

 from various oil-bearing seeds, and grain and meals of various kinds, 

 which have been unusually cheap — has become the best security for 

 farm profits, whether they are dependent upon the quantity of meat 

 made upon and sold from the farm, or on the quantity of corn grown 

 there, owing to the increased quantity and quality of the manure thus 

 made. 



The value of covered yards for stock has been the subject of dis- 

 cussion during the past quarter before the London Farmers' Club and 

 in the pages of the ' Agricultural Society's Journal.' Shelter for 

 feeding cattle is useful, both as economizing the use of food in the pro- 

 cesses of nutrition, and as preserving the soluble and fertilizing ingre- 

 dients in the manure made during the feeding process. To this, ample 

 testimony exists in agricultural experience, and has been lately borne 

 by our leading agricultural authorities. The related subject of cattle 

 food has also been of late discussed : Mr. Lawes' experiments on the 

 nutriment in raw and malted barley respectively, have established the 

 fact which might have been anticipated, on theoretical grounds, that 

 the process of malting, by its destruction and dissipation of much of 

 the actual material of the grain malted, diminishes the feeding powers 

 of a given quantity of barley. The general result of Mr. Lawes' 

 inquiry is, that in only one of the comparative experiments, viz. in 

 the first and second lots of sheep experimented on, which were fed re- 

 spectively, besides other things, on barley and on the malt produced 

 from an equal quantity of that barley, was the increase of the weight 

 higher, and the amount of food required to yield a given amount of in- 

 crease lower, from the malt than from the barley ; and in that instance 

 the amounts were very nearly the same in the two cases. In all the 

 other comparative trials, whether with oxen, sheep, or pigs, the advan- 

 tage was with the barley, and in a greater degree than it had been with 

 the malt in the single instance quoted. 



An excellent and elaborate account of the existin gcattle foods, 

 both home-grown and imported, was given by Professor J. Coleman, in 

 a lecture before the Society of Arts, on April 5. Among other new 

 substances named was the palm-nut kernel meal, which contains no 

 less than 25 per cent, of a feeding oil, and 15 per cent, of flesh- 

 forming material, and has proved on trial with cattle, sheep, and pigs, 



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