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In feeding cattle with green food, there are many 
advantages in soiling , or supplying them with food, 
where their manure is preserved, out of the field : 
the plants are less injured when cut, than when 
torn or jagged by the teeth of the cattle, and no 
food is wasted by being trodden down. They are 
likewise obliged to feed without making selection ; 
and in consequence the whole food is consumed : 
the attachment or dislike to a particular kind of 
food exhibited by animals, offers no proof of its 
nutritive powers. Cattle, at first, refuse linseed 
cake, one of the most nutritive substances on which 
they can be fed. * 
* For the following observations on the selection of different 
kinds of common food by sheep and cattle, I am obliged to 
Mr. George Sinclair. 
“ Lolium perenne , rye-grass. Sheep eat this grass when it 
is in the early stage of its growth, in preference to most others ; 
but after the seed approaches towards perfection, they leave it 
for almost any other kind. A field in the park at Woburn was 
laid down in two equal parts, one part with rye-grass and white 
clover, and the other part with cock’s-foot and red clover: from 
the spring till midsummer the sheep kept almost constantly on 
the rye-grass ; but after that time they left it, and adhered with 
equal constancy to the cock’s-foot during the remainder of the 
season. 
“ Dactylis glomerata , cock’s-foot. Oxen, horses, and sheep 
eat this grass readily. The oxen continue to eat the straws, 
and flowers, from the time of flowering, till the time of perfect- 
ing the seed : this was exemplified in a striking manner in the 
field before alluded to. The oxen generally kept to the cock’s- 
foot and red clover, and the sheep to the rye-grass and white 
clover. In the experiments published in the Amcenitates Aca- 
demicae, by the pupils of Linnaeus, it is asserted, that this grass 
is rejected by oxen : the above fact, however, is in contradic- 
tion of it. 
