Notes on French Agriculture. 
787 
four months M. de More has given his horses 5 litres (5 lb.) of 
bread, instead of 12 litres of oats, with a substantial saving in cost. 
He has a sack of wheat worth 32 francs (\l. 66*. 8 d.) ground by his 
miller, who returns 37'5 kilos (82 lb.) of bran, and 106 kilos (233 lb.) 
of flour ; with the latter he bakes 127 kilos (280 lb.) of bread, the 
baking costing 2 francs (Is. 8 d.). Reckoning the bran to be worth 
6 francs, the 127 kilos of bread cost 28 francs (\l. 3s. 4c?.). Giving 
2*5 kilos (5 )t lb.) of bread instead of 12 litres of oats, his expenditure 
is 85 centimes (8|c?.) instead of 1 franc 25 centimes (about Is.) per 
horse, or a saving of 40 centimes (nearly 4 d.) a day per head, and he 
finds the horses to thrive equally as well. 
M. le Marquis de Dampierre has fed fifteen horses upon a 
bread made from wheat-flour and bran. He substitutes 1 kilo 
(2-2 lb.) of bread for 3 kilos (6 -6 lb.) of hay and 2 litres (3£ pints) 
of oats, with satisfactory results. 
M. Lavaland does not think it possible to work horses that have 
been fed upon bread alone. He has tried it with the horses belonging 
to the Omnibus Company of the City of Paris, and at the end of 
nine months had to give it up. He thinks that bread for horses 
should not contain more water than oats, or about 10 to 14 percent., 
and that bread can only be given in addition to the ordinary food. 
In answer to this, it is said that there was no question of giving 
bread to other than farm horses. 
M. Pluchet substituted 5 kilos (11 lb.) of bread for 4 kilos 
(8 - 8 lb.) of oats, showing a saving of 33 centimes (3d.) per head per 
day. This bread was made from rye and barley costing 1 1 centimes 
the kilo (\d. per lb.). The same experiment has also been tried 
upon cattle, substituting 5 kilos (11 lb.) of bread for 4 kilos (8'8 lb.) of 
cake, with a saving of 17 centimes (l^e?.) per head per day. 
M. Schribaux, the Director of the Seed Trial Station of the 
Institut National Agronomique, states that for several years the 
stations have received wheat from England, and that from the first 
he has been much struck with the exceptional behaviour of these 
samples when germinating. Whilst those harvested in France 
germinated completely in three to five days, and those from Algeria 
in less, the English samples took three to four weeks to germinate 
completely. These are the figures for 1892, per 100 : — 
Number of Days— 2 3 5 7 9 12 14 16 19 21 24 
French Wheat . . 3 86 100 — — — — — — — — 
English Wheat . . — — 1 16 33 50 67 72 84 95 — 
The English wheats take up water and swell as quickly as the 
French wheats, but the breaking-up of the store of the kernel by 
the diastase is slow, due to the want, or rather insufficiency, of 
nourishment which in the case of English wheat delays the develop- 
ment of the germ, its physiological ripeness being still incomplete. 
English wheats, like all wheats grown in climates affected by 
the sea, are more or less damp, and it is the excess of moisture that 
hinders the formation of diastase and delays germination. The 
following experiment proves this : — 
