On increasing our Supplies of Animal Food. 



357 



The unfortunate thing- is, that in agriculture, as in other de- 

 partments of knowledge, we can ask a great many more questions 

 than ice can answer. There are many points in farming- on which 

 we must be content with the loose average sort of judgment 

 which memory enables an unrecorded experience to pronounce ; 

 and indeed, till we have the exact results of very many cases, I 

 must prefer this rough average memory of things to the single 

 instances, on which, if we would affect accuracy, we are at present 

 forced to base our estimates. The few instances in which exact 

 observations have yet been recorded cannot, in so variable a matter 

 as " feeding," be taken as trustworthy guides ; and, as published 

 statements on this subject have generally been among the maxima 

 of agricultural truth, as otherwise most probably they would not 

 have been published, they are the less worthy of confidence. No 

 one but the educated man, who has long been a farmer, can be 

 aware of the extremely inexact state of the art, or how few trust- 

 worthy facts exist as the groundwork of sound calculation in 

 agriculture. Of course no amount of knowledge would enable a 

 confident estimate in the case of a small farm, because there 

 variations would be sure to occur in successive seasons — one year 

 would be better than another. But when the result of extensive 

 operations has to be estimated, the variations of season on the 

 many small farms of different soil, which they would then affect, 

 may be supposed to balance one another, and the average of a 

 long and truthful experience would then be most useful. Perhaps 

 all that can be said of this matter, in relation to the manufacture 

 of meat, is that data such as this we do not possess ; and 

 thus a writer on this subject can do little more than state im- 

 pressions and prevailing ideas on the topics which he requires 

 to mention. 



L Our first question is, What sort of animal will most econo- 

 mically convert vegetable produce into meat ? A cottager would 

 say, the hog ; most farmers will say, the sheep. The decision of 

 the former is perhaps induced by the omnivorous character of the 

 animal, which, where all sorts of waste have to be used, is a most 

 useful quality. I believe that perhaps, if the same price could 

 always be obtained for the carcase of the hog as for that of the 

 sheep or the ox, the first would be the most profitable of the three. 

 There is less waste of food in the growth of offal ; the proportion 

 of offal to carcase in a well-bred -hog is often not more than as 1 

 to 2, or one-third of the live weight of the animal ; while in the 

 sheep not more than a Smithfield stone of mutton out of every 

 imperial stone of live weight can be calculated on ; and in the ox 

 the offal is very often heavier than the carcase.* Another most 



* In published works the proportion of beef has generally been put much higher; 

 VOL. X. 2 B 



