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XVII. — On the Composition and Nutritive Value of Stjmo. 
By Du. Augustus Voelcker. 
Both ^Ir. Mechi and Mr. Hoisfall have done good service to 
agriculture by tlie publication of their experience in feeding and 
fattening cattle with food, a considerable portion of which con- 
sisted of straw-chaff. In whatever light Mr. Mechi's experience 
in fattening cattle or Mr. Horsfall's dairy management may be 
regarded, the merit cannot be denied to these gentlemen of 
having succeeded in directing the attention of the British farmer 
to the use of straw as an economical feeding-material. 
[Many farmers form much too low an estimate of the feed- 
ing value of every kind of straw, except pea-haulm. On the 
other hand, the views of others respecting the nutriment con- 
tained in straw are so unmistakeably exaggerated that, with some 
degree of justice, they are made a laughing-stock at the market- 
table. The main anxiety of the first-named class seems to be how 
to tread into manure all the straw grown on the farm ; that of the 
second, how to stuff stock with all the straw at their disposal : 
the creed of the former being that neither little nor much will 
do their cattle any good, whilst the latter hold that any appro- 
priation of it for litter is an intolerable waste. 
The sober-minded, observant, and intelligent agriculturist, 
liowever, knows full well that whilst wheat, oat, and barley 
straw when cut into chafi" possess a certain feeding value, par- 
ticularly when this bulky material is combined with some con- 
centrated or more readily digestible food, they are not the less 
essential on the generality of farms to the production of good 
farmyard manure. On most farms, indeed, the want of straw 
is felt mucli more on account of the difficulty of preserving the 
most valuable constituents of the liquid and solid excrements 
which arises from an insufficient supply of litter, than because 
an economical substitute for this kind of bulky food cannot be 
found. 
Were it the object of this paper to discuss specially the use of 
straw as a manure, or rather a manure-producing and preserving 
agent, I might show that on most farms it is not only the 
cheapest but also the most efficient and valuable of the bulky 
materials at command for converting the excrementitious matters 
of our domestic animals into good yard-manure. But as I 
intend to direct the attention of the reader more particularly to 
the feeding properties of straw, I shall offer only a few observa- 
tions on its manurial properties. 
The intrinsic fertilising value of the straw of our cereal crops 
— that is, its fertilising value as far as this is dependent upon 
