140 
Sh-aiu as Food for Stock. 
which ho thinks would follow from its largely extended employ- 
ment as food for stock. He says : — 
"Feeding with wheat-straw is quite the exception in this neighbourhood, 
though I think my experience would be that store-cattle with the same amount 
of cake and wheat-straw, would thrive faster after the first few days, than 
with barley- or oat-straw. 
"rWhere there are no restrictions as to selling straw, the price of 60s. per 
ton at the nearest railway station would naturally limit the use of it. 
" Where there are restrictions, the present price would rather point to the 
use of a larger proportion in this or some other practical manner, in preference 
to casting it wholesale into the stock-yard, where it would come out another 
day as low-pressure farmyard-manure, or to placing it on farm-buildings as a 
covering which is neither vermin-proof nor fire-proof. 
"I have some lands, in the more exposed situations, which would very 
much miss the return of straw in some shape as manure : I believe the con- 
tinued absence of such manure would bring about a state of things beyond the 
reach of our present substitutes, even if generously applied. But supposing 
this to he the case, it seems a great pity that such a consideration should 
stand in the way of more advanced farming where the land is richer in character 
or more favourably situated. 
" The feeding of barley- and oat-straw by sheep and cattle is quite a general 
practice. I should say, perhaps, of the hulk grown, one-fourth may not be 
placed before them — from being threshed out of season or some other cause ; 
of the remainder, half would be fed by cattle and half by sheep, two-thirds of 
which would be actually consumed ; the refuse, being rejected as unpalatable 
and indigestible, would be levelled about the yards for bedding. Wheat- 
straw fed by cattle would carry about the same waste. 
" If we take a bundle of straw, and place it with others on a building, we 
expect it to stand all weathers for from twenty to thirty years ; then, if we give 
the next bundle to a, pair of cows, we expect them to extract all the nourish- 
ment and all the consistency in about as many hours : surely we ought not to 
refuse them a little right of selection — and we could not expect them to thank 
us for any mechanical or chemical interference which would make it more 
difficult, still less would they he grateful if we made the selection impossible. 
" I do not consider it pays in any way for chaff-cutting, except for con- 
venience of mixing with hay or other food to simplify the work of feeding at 
off-lying stations. 
" With cattle (and I dare say it is the same with sheep in a less serious 
degree), I find that the process of rumination is made difficult in proportion 
to the trouble taken in improving the straw from its natural state. 
" There are some articles of food which I should like to see placed in the 
hands of our scientific advisers, to be changed from their natural state and 
rendered palatable and profitable ; they are often to be bought at a reasonable 
first cost, in proportion to their bulk. I mean the lower-priced cotton-cakes, 
locust-beans, millet, rice-meal, &c, articles evidently intended to fill and not 
to fatten ; they would come into the same class of food as the straw, with 
which, from your questions, you would have us feed more generally. 
If we were to increase our stock throughout the year so as to feed nearly all 
our grass-crops in a green state, and then consume our entire crop of straw in 
the winter, how should we prepared for a year like 1860, when there was no 
straw harvested on account of the rain ? or years like 1868 or 1870, when there 
was comparatively none to harvest ? Can you imagine what cheerful stock 
markets we should have for a time when such seasons dawned upon us ? Pray 
don't advise tenant-farmers to get into such a corner. Bather try and improve 
our selection of low-priced artificial feeding-stuffs, and clear away for us any 
