264 
Desirable Agricultural Experiments. 
is that it would throw a good deal of light upon a question of 
fully equal importance to the one named as the main issue to 
be tested. It appears to be now generally admitted that 
cattle made ready for the butcher at the age of two years or 
sooner pay better than those kept on until they are three years 
of age or older. At least, there is pretty conclusive evidence of 
this being the case when the animals are fed well from calf-hood. 
The records of daily gain, from birth, of cattle exhibited at the 
chief fat-stock shows of England and the United States prove 
that the gain is greater on the average with animals up to the 
age of two years than it is up to that of three years or more ; and 
as common experience shows that the consumption of food on the 
part of the older beasts is greater than that of the younger ones, 
the superior profitableness of the latter is sufficiently proved as 
far as cattle fed for exhibition are concerned. It does not ne- 
cessarily follow that a beast fed well up to the end of its second 
year, and finished off then, pays better than one of equal quality 
kept cheaply until it is two years old, and then fattened up to 
the end of the third year. To test this point a separate set of 
trials would be necessary. Nor do show records afford a con- 
clusive answer to the question whether it pays to keep cattle 
until they are three or four years of age. In most cases of 
beasts exhibited at one year’s show when three years of age, 
and again at the next, the value of the increase in the live- 
weight is not sufficient to cover a reasonable estimate of the cost 
of feeding them during the interval ; and in many cases the 
same may be said of animals exhibited first as two-year-olds and 
again as three-year-olds. But in the absence of actual data as 
to the cost of feeding, the evidence is not conclusive. Besides, 
what is true of show beasts is not necessarily so of those fed 
in an ordinary way for the butcher. 
A few years ago an American writer published the average 
results shown by the records of three “ block tests ” held at the 
Chicago Fat Stock Show, when the exhibitors were required to 
furnish details as to the food given to the animals. Although I 
cannot now lay my hand upon the article referred to, I dis- 
tinctly remember that the conclusions arrived at were that 
beasts slaughtered at the age of two years or less paid better 
than those three years old, and that those kept till they were four 
years old did not pay at all. The evidence, however, was not 
sufficiently trustworthy, because there was no proof of the 
accuracy of the statements submitted by individual exhibitors. 
Here, too, the objection maj" be raised that the case of a show 
beast is not a fair criterion. 
Now, a sufficient number of trials of the first class, suggested 
