ACORN-POISONING . 
61 
* Upon inquiry as to whether any mischief had been done to 
stock by their eating acorns, we were told that in a period of 
seven years only one or two sheep had suffered from eating, 
and it was significantly added “ these were the poorest and 
most unhealthy of the flock and that only one case of actual 
death from acorns was believed to have taken place. 
So much, indeed, was the farmer convinced of the value of 
acorns, that he asserted that, tff notwithstanding the shortness 
of keep, the good crops of these would render the cost of keep- 
ing sheep less than usual” It would seem that in an unusu- 
ally bad season a large crop of acorns has saved money which 
otherwise must have been spent in corn and cake ; but we 
must not omit to mention that the tenant observed that “ he 
should like the farm better if it had no trees at all” 
On this farm no preparation of the acorns was made, but 
from our own experiments we came to the conclusion that 
allowing them to partially germinate ( 'malt ) increased their 
sweetness, and probably prevented costiveness by the deve- 
lopment of'sugar.” 
Respecting the chemical constitution of acorns. Professor 
Church wrote in the Chamber of Agriculture Journal in 
1869 to this effect : 
“ The nutritive value of acorns which have been freed 
from their cups is by no means inconsiderable ; starch, sugar, 
and oil make up together about half their weight, so that as 
regards these heat-giving and fat-forming food constituents 
acorns do not differ widely from some of the poorer kinds of 
cake. Their deficiency is in the so-called flesh-forming or 
nitrogenous constituents. Of these important substances 
recent analyses do not show more than, if so much as, five 
per cent, to be present in the whole acorn, a proportion 
which is less than one fourth of that existing in common 
cotton cake, and not one sixth of that contained in good rape 
cake. 
“ But if acorns can furnish only small amounts of these 
flesh formers, the value of their other feeding constituents 
must not be depreciated, for the peculiar sugar which they 
contain exists in notable proportion, about eight per cent., 
while the fixed oil w’hich is also present in them has been 
variously estimated at from two and a half to five per cent. 
“ The drawbacks to the free use of acorns are to be traced 
to an entirely distinct set of substances ; these impart to the 
seed its astringency and bitterness, and are made up of tan- 
nin, a volatile oil, and a bitter principle. Some chemists 
have extracted as much as nine per cent, of tannin from 
whole acorns. To destroy the astringency and bitterness, 
