122 
Straw as Food for Stock. 
and influence practical farming. When Mr. S. Jonas subsequently 
imparted his discovery of the practicability of improving the 
feeding properties of straw-chaff, Dr. Voelcker, ten years later, in 
1871, again brought his scientific knowledge to bear very fully on 
the subject, so as to elucidate, by analytical proofs, some points 
important to be known. In 1865 Mr. John Coleman and Mr. 
Evershed entered fully into the possibility of feeding sheep in 
the winter entirely on straw-chaff and meal ; so that well-nigh 
every feature of straw utilisation as food, and the advantages to 
be gained thereby, has been already forcibly delineated. But it 
is a subject of immense importance, which can scarcely receive 
too much attention, as it bears very intimately on the prac- 
ticability of making the land support more stock and yield 
larger returns of meat. 
Dr. Voelcker has stated : " It is undoubtedly a fact that some 
practical feeders are in possession of the secret of converting 
considerable quantities of straw into beef." And Mr. Mechi, 
in his latest published book, reiterates in substance the state- 
ment made before the Society of Arts in 1850 : " Experience 
has taught me, and will teach others, that in order to succeed 
in farming, we must produce a much larger quantity of meat 
on our farms than at present, and at less cost. In order to do 
this advantageously, it becomes necessary to consume a large 
portion of the straw of the farm, cut into chaff, and cook it 
with meal or ground oilcake. We are thus deprived of the 
usual bedding, and must find a substitute." 
The straw of the farm has always been made, more or less, 
to serve the double purpose of foddering and littering stock, 
while in the old times a much larger proportion of it was 
wasted than now. Arthur Young, in his ' Calendar,' gave very 
good teaching to the farmers of 1804 as to the use of straw. 
He said : " The common cases of straw-feeding are of cows, 
young cattle, or black cattle, just brought in and not yet put to 
fatting. With regard to cows, the food is certainly insufficient, 
and lets them down so much in flesh, that when they calve, and 
are expected to yield productively, they lose a considerable 
time, and that, perhaps, the most valuable, in getting again 
into flesh, before they give their usual quantity of milk ; but if 
they have been well and sufficiently wintered, they are half 
summered, and yield at once adequately. For young cattle it 
is still worse management, for their growth is stunted, and they 
never recover it. In so far as regards the quality of the farm- 
yard-dung, this reasoning becomes still more forcible ; for from 
straw-fed cattle the farmer will, at the' end of winter, find, per- 
haps, a large heap of so poor a quality, that it will go but a 
little way in manuring his fields ; whereas one load of dung 
