82 
Suffar as a Food for Stock. 
quotation, " Refined Sugar continues in fair demand for cattle 
feeding at 10/. 15s. to IIZ. 5s. per ton." 
It is now exactly thirty years since I read a paper before 
the British Association for the Advancement of Science on the 
equivalence of starch and sugar in food. At the period to which 
I am alluding there was a considerable duty upon sugar, and 
one object of the experiments was to ascertain whether its feed- 
ing properties were sufficiently great to justify the farmer in 
making large use of the duty free sugar. 
The experiments were carried out upon pigs, which were 
fattened with starch and sugar, mixed with limited quantities 
of other foods. Before referring to the results obtained, I pro- 
pose to make a few observations on food in relation to man and 
animals. If we compare the size of the stomach of a man with 
that of the domestic animals, it will be found that the former 
requires a comparatively concentrated food, and that there is 
not the space, nor does man possess what may be described as 
the necessary machinery, for extracting the food element from a 
large amount of indigestible matter. At Rothamsted I find 
that my cows consume about 100 lbs. of solid (not dry) food 
daily. The weight of nine men would be about equal to that 
of one cow ; one man would therefore have to eat 11 lbs. of solid 
food daily in order to consume as much as a cow. There is 
no better food for an ox or a sheep than a first-class pasture, 
and yet a man could not support life upon grass. It might be 
possible by some chemical process to produce from grass a 
nutritious substance which a man could use as food, but the 
food so extracted would be far more costly than as it existed in 
the grass, and no one would think of preparing such a food 
for oxen or sheep, as their machinery is quite competent to 
separate the nutritious from the indigestible portion of the 
food. 
A farmer who feeds stock for profit should exercise a con- 
siderable amount of judgment, as well as caution in the selection 
of their food. He should bear in mind that all processes of 
manufacture increase the cost of a food. Look, for example, 
at the extraordinary amount of mechanical and chemical skill 
which has been brought to bear upon the grain of wheat in order 
to produce a loaf of bread. A little coarse grinding, or even a 
few hours soaking in water, is all that is necessary to adapt the 
wheat to the requirements of the animal stomacli. It is true 
that we purchase the bran and pollard for our stock, but it is as 
waste products ; wo do not pay the cost of their manufacture, 
and if there was no sale for these products they would have to 
be thrown nway. In a similar way — as I pointed out many 
years ago — linseed, cotton, and rape cakes arc waste products; 
