FRENCH MILITARY VETERINARY MEDICINE. 
31 
we so cursorily looked into, last; not with the view of setting 
forth our faith in what we are going to detail, though we are 
quite ready and willing to concede to our neighbours beyond the 
channel every credit, and our humble thanks too, for taking so 
much pains, as they evidently have done, to come at the truth of 
what appears set down as matter of fact too firmly rooted by 
custom to give place to any novel facts which might suggest any 
other mode of feeding horses. We must have hay, corn, and 
straw, or corn, hay, and straw. These constitute the three cardi- 
nal forages or horse-meats, or, rather, two of them do ; the third 
kind being intended to serve the animal as litter for bed; albeit, 
now and then, it happens that horses “ eat their beds,” and in pre- 
ference, too, to the hay set before them. In the inferences drawn, 
in the work before us, from feeding horses on hay and straw, 
either in combination or singly, we may take occasion here to 
remark, that the hay in France is by no means of a quality com- 
parable, as we believe, with our own ; and that on this account 
due allowance must be made for the low estimate it will be found 
in the “ reports” before us to be set at, relatively to the alleged 
nutritive virtues of wheaten straw. 
Hay. 
The ANALYSIS OF HAY of good quality grown in different locali- 
ties varies in no appreciable degree. Regarding hay as the farmer’s 
staple horse-food, we may represent its nutritive equivalent by 10. 
Straw. 
The ANALYSIS OF STRAW of good quality has shewn its repre- 
sentative nutritive value to be, as compared with hay at 10, 331 2; 
by which is meant, that it will take so many lbs. of straw to nourish 
equal to 10 lbs. of hay. Oat, rye, and barley straw, present much 
the same equivalents as wheat straw ; they may be severally esti- 
mated at 33-12. The sample of straw examined, and which was 
found to be estimated at 30, yielded 812 per 100 of normal water. 
There is little doubt that the wide differences observed in the sub- 
stantive ingredients of straw (one analysis representing them as 
15, another at 50) have in part arisen from the dryness, more or 
