530 



Agricultural Chemistry. — Pig Feeding. 



of increase, namely, pen 4, the food contained both Bran and 

 a very large proportion of the highly nitrogenous Bean and 

 Lentil meal. There is, indeed, throughout this Series, scarcely 

 an instance of deviation from the regularity in the amounts of 

 non-nitrogenous or dry organic substance, consumed to produce a 

 given amount of increase, which is not so accounted for by the 

 character of the food, or by the known progress of the animals, 

 as consistently to indicate a very close relationship between the 

 available ?zo?i-nitrogenous constituents of the food and the in- 

 crease of the so-called '"''fattening'''' animal. In the column of the 

 amounts of nitrogenous constituents, consumed to produce a given 

 weight of increase, we have, however, no indication whatever 

 of any direct numerical relationship of the one to the other. 

 In one of the pens which we have excluded from our calculation 

 — since the food in it could not be considered of good fattening 

 quality — there was indeed three and a half times as much nitro- 

 genous substance, consumed to produce a given amount of increase, 

 as in one or 'two of the other pens. But, excluding as before, 

 pens 9, 10, and 11, from the estimate, we even then find, that 

 the range in the amounts of nitrogenous substance, consumed to 

 produce 100 lbs. of increase, is from 57 lbs., as in pen 5, or 

 58J lbs., as in pen 7, to 138 lbs., as in pen 1, and even to 

 161 lbs., as in pen 3. We have, then, among the nine pens 

 with fattening foods, a variation in the quantities of nitrogenous 

 substance, consumed to produce a given amount of increase, in 

 the proportion of from 1 to nearly 3. 



In the First Series then, taking the nine pens, we have, even in 

 the actual figures of the Table (XXV.), a very much closer re- 

 lationship between the increase produced, and the amounts con- 

 sumed — of non-nitrogenous, or total organic — than of nitrogenous 

 substance. Whilst, as we have pointed out, the variations in 

 the amounts of the non-nitrogenous substance consumed are 

 generally such as to show, even more clearly, that, beyond a 

 narrow limit of nitrogenous supply, the proportion of increase 

 obtained to a given quantity of this consumed, is in a very 

 rapidly decreasing ratio. There is evidence, however, in the 

 results, that probably in one or two cases in the Series, the nitro- 

 genous supply in the food was at the minimum, if not even 

 somewhat below the amount best adapted as the food of the 

 fattening pig. 



Looking to the same points in Series II. (Table XXVI.), we 

 see, that there is a very much closer relationship in the amounts 

 of non-nitrogenous or total dry organic substance, consumed to 

 produce a given amount of increase, than in Series I. ; and there 

 is at the same time, a variation in the amounts of nitrogenous 

 substance consumed, but little less than in the nine pens of the 



