St?-aw as Food for Stock. 
153 
Dr. Voelcker, and other scientific experts, have, I believe, 
sufficiently proved by chemical analysis, that a ton of straw 
possesses sufficient nutritive properties to yield this amount of 
beef, but an animal could not eat enough straw to keep the 
machinery going without the addition of richer feeding sub- 
stances. The whole virtue would be taken up in supplying 
heat to the system, and repairing the waste of the tissues, &c. 
But when straw is used for bulk and oil-cake and other sub- 
stances to improve the quality of a mixed dietary, it is only 
reasonable to give the straw credit for what it supplies towards 
the beef-making, and this appears to be what Mr. Mechi has 
actually done. 
Mr. Horsfall, in vol. xviii., page 171 of this Journal, 
observed, " In wheat straw, for which I pay 35s. per ton, 
I obtain for Is. 2^d. *50 oil and 32 lbs. starch or (the starch 
reduced to oil) 18^ lbs., available for the production of fat or 
for respiration. I know no other material from which I can 
derive by purchase an equal amount of this element of food 
at so low a price. The value of straw calculated as manure is 
i)s Id. per ton." 
But Mr. Horsfall gave this as scientific evidence, fully ac- 
counting for his success in a particular system of feeding dairy 
cows on a mixed dietary, the chief items of which were rape- 
cake, malt-combs, bran, and straw-chaff of different kinds, all 
intermixed and steamed or cooked before being employed. The 
results were so important, that his cows gave more bountiful 
yieldings of milk, and of far higher quality, than they had done 
before, and put on flesh rapidly, even to getting quite fat while 
in full profit. His cream was of so thick a consistency as to 
admit of laying a penny piece on it without sinking, and it 
yielded a far larger proportion of butter than ordinary cream. 
Casting about for reasons to account for all this, he found them 
in a comparison of the chemical analysis of the mixed nutritive 
substances supplied by him, with that of the food commonly 
supplied to dairy cows. His researches led him to see that 
even the best hay is not a food good enough for a milch-cow 
to enable her to do her best, and he said, " You cannot 
induce a cow to consume the quantity of hay requisite for her 
maintenance, and for a full yield of milk." 
Mr. Horsfall fully proved, both scientifically and practically, 
the greater economy of feeding milch-cows on straw-chaff, rape- 
cake, malt-combs, &c, rather than on hay ; but the immense 
value of straw to him consisted in his system allowing the full 
amount of nutritive properties it contains to be appropriated. 
That this was his own view, appears from the following : — " I 
am satisfied the most economical use of food rich in albuminous 
