COMPOSITION AND NUTRITIVE VALUE OE COTTON-CAKE. 327 
4. At the present time four distinct kinds of cotton-cake 
are offered for sale in the market, namely : 
1. Thin decorticated cotton-cake. 
2. Thick decorticated cake. 
3. Common cake made of the whole seed. 
4. Oil-meal (No 2 reduced to coarse powder). 
5. The thin decorticated cake is a far better and more 
economic food than the ordinary cake, which is often quite 
unfit for feeding purposes. 
6. Thick cake scarcely differs in composition from thin cake, 
but being hard, and 2^ to 3 inches thick, it cannot be crushed 
by an ordinary oil-cake crusher, and therefore presents incon¬ 
venience to the consumer. 
7. Genuine oil-meal is simply thick decorticated cake 
reduced to a coarse powder, and of course has the same com¬ 
position as the cake from which it is made. 
8. The composition, and with it the nutritive value, of 
different samples of cotton-cake is subject to considerable 
variation. 
9. Decorticated cotton-cake and oil-meal, in comparison 
with other kinds of artificial food, are decidedly cheap feed¬ 
ing materials, and both, no doubt, ere long, will find that 
favour with the British farmer which a really valuable and 
cheap article of consumption is certain to command. 
After the foregoing pages were in type, I received a note 
from Mr. John Fryer, Manor House, Chatteris, enclosing a 
sample of cotton-cake, and giving a short account of the 
death of a bullock that had been fed upon the cake and upon 
mangolds, barley-meal, and clover-hay. Mr. Fryer enclosed 
the following report of the veterinary surgeon f 
“ Surgeon’s Post-mortem Examination. 
“ Internal and external appearance healthy, nothing inflammatory. 
Paunch enormously distended with food. The manifold (I speak as butchers 
speak) crammed and jammed full of substance like tough dough rolled hard 
and adhering to the folds. Lower stomach quite empty. The duodenum, • 
for twenty-four inches in length, entirely blocked up with two or more pounds 
of the irregular shapen concave and comminuted husks. Upon comparing 
them microscopically with the cake before eaten, they were found to be 
identical.” 
This report leaves no doubt about the cause of death. The 
distension of the first bowels was evidently caused by cotton- 
husks, which, I am informed, were pressed so tightly into the 
bowel as to give externally the appearance of stones. 
On examining Mr. Fryer’s cotton-cake, I found it to con- 
