206 NUTRITIVE PROPERTIES OP THE CAROB BEAN. 
alkalies, which vrould neutralize the acid principle ; bu the 
alkali in small quantities so activates the secretion by the 
gastric glands that the neutralizing effect of the alkali is more 
than compensated ; and if, for example, with iron, a little 
carbonate of soda be exhibited, the solution of that iron 
will be more speedily effected than if iron alone enters the 
stomach. 
21, Dublin Street, Edinburgh ; 
March , 1857. 
Facts and Observations. 
THE NUTRITIVE PROPERTIES OE THE CAROB BEAN. 
In consequence of the different statements which have 
recently appeared relative to the value of the locust bean for 
the feeding of horses and cattle, the Council of the Royal 
Agricultural Society directed the attention of Professor Way 
to the subject, and the following analyses have just been sent 
to the Council by him, from which it appears that these 
beans contain but a smaller centage of nitrogenized matter, 
and a very large quantity of sugar. Their use for the feeding 
of cattle, and for which they have been principally employed 
in England, appears not to be warranted by continental 
experience, as in those parts of southern Europe, and in 
Italy in particular, where they abound, they are given almost 
exclusively to horses. The seeds are found to pass through 
the alimentary canal of cattle unaltered by the digestive and 
assimilative processes to a far greater extent than in horses, 
which probably arises in part fromthe difference in the time the 
two animals take in masticating their food, the act being less 
perfectly accomplished by the ox than the horse, unless the 
food should be subjected to remastication, as in the process of 
rumination, but which aliment of this particular description 
is not very likely to be, differing so essentially as it does from 
hay and allied provender. Hitherto from the great amount of 
syrup which exudes by pressure from the pods, and which clogs 
up our ordinary crushing machines, no simple and effective 
method has been found to comminute the seeds, and from 
this cause also the greater part of the flesh-forming property 
of the carob is lost. 
“ Analysis of carob beans imported from Sicily by Messrs. 
