200 On the Fattening of Oxen. 
The last two columns of Table III. do, indeed, show that the 
proportion which the lungs bear to the weight of the whole body 
decreases considerably as it matures ; that is to say, as it fattens, 
and the proportion of the carcass increases. But the facts relating 
to the amounts of food consumed, and of increase yielded, as the 
animal matures, are quite adverse to the supposition that there is 
any such progressive diminution in the expenditure by the lespi- 
ratory process for a given live-weight, as can at all compensate 
for the lessened proportion of increase which it yields with, 
advancing maturity. 
Upon the whole, it is concluded that there is a considerable 
economy of food in the .system of early and rapid fattening of 
sheep ; and that, after the animals have attained a moderate 
degree of fatness, it will seldom be profitable, and may fre- 
quently be a loss, to the -producer, to feed them further. 
The same remarks will probably apply, mutatis mutandis, to 
oxen also. 
The same rule does not apply with equal force to pigs. 
The dry substance of the food of pigs is, weight for weight, 
much more costly than that of the other animals ; but, in their 
case, from the much larger proportion of increase they yield, both 
for a given amount of dry substance of food consumed, and for 
a given weight of the body within a given time, it results that 
the amount of constituents expended by the respiratory process 
bears a considerably less proportion to the gain in weight, than 
in that of either sheep or oxen. Again, their increase consists in a 
larger proportion of fat ; and by the fatness of the meat its quality 
and value are to a great extent determined. On the other hand, 
not only do the quality and rateable value of mutton and beef 
reach their maximum, or nearly so, at a comparatively limited 
degree of fatness, but it appears that the amount of constituents 
expended by respiration increases more rapidly in proportion 
to a given weight of saleable increase as the animals progress in 
fatness. 
XII. — Report of Experiments on the Fattening of Oxen, at Wobum 
Park Farm. By J. B. Lawes, F.R.S., F.C.S., and Dr. 
J. H. Gilbert, F.R.S., F.C.S. 
In 1849, after we had commenced numerous experiments with 
sheep, and some few with oxen and pigs, with a view to de- 
termine the relations of both the meat and manure produced to 
the food consumed to produce them. His Grace the late Duke of 
Bedford kindly placed at our disposal, for the purposes of our 
inquiry, his numerous feeding boxes and fattening oxen. The 
advantages at Woburn were, the selection from, and dealing with 
large numbers of animals, and the^facility afforded by the box 
