1848. 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
175 
plant; hence the mode of curing should be such as will 
prevent these from falling off and being wasted. Thus 
euring it in cocks as is now practised in this country 
to some extent, is proved to be the best. 
The conclusions above given, as well as the results 
of Mr. Horsford’s analysis generally, when brought to 
the test of practice, are found to be correct; and we 
may hope that a proper application of chemical science 
to agriculture, will in other cases alike harmonize with 
established facts. 
Are there not, however, certain positions assumed by 
some chemists which are either at variance with known 
facts, or are at least difficult to be reconciled with them? 
I would cast no unreasonable distrust on the theories 
which have been given to the world through the medi¬ 
um of scientific chemical investigation. Some new and 
important truths have doubtless been discovered, and 
when we consider the comparative infancy of the sci¬ 
ence, it is perhaps reasonable to expect in future greater 
perfection in its practice and a corresponding correct¬ 
ness in regard to results and conclusions. 
Chemists usually divide the substances used as food 
for animals, into nitrogenized and non-nitrogenized— 
the former are considered the special elements of nutri¬ 
tion, the®latter only the elements of respiration. Lie¬ 
big’s arrangement of these substances is as follows:— 
Elements of nutrition. 
Vegetable fibrine, 
Vegetable albumen, 
Vegetable caseine, 
Animal flesh, 
Animal blood. 
Elements of respiration . 
Fat, Pectine, 
Starch, Bassorine, 
Gum, Wine, 
Cane sugar. Beer, 
Grape sugar, Spirits, 
Sugar of milk, 
Liebig thinks that substances of the former class only 
are capable of forming or supporting the organized tis¬ 
sues. He says-—“ The former are capable of conversion 
into blood, the latter incapable of this transformation. 
* * * Out of those substances which are adapted to 
the formation of the blood, are formed all the organized 
tissues.”* 
Now the question is, do practical results, in all re¬ 
spects agree with this arrangement and these conclu¬ 
sions? Let us see. It is admitted that all bodily exer¬ 
tion produces a greater or less waste of muscular tissue. 
Liebig says—“the slightest motion of a finger consumes 
force,” and “ that in consequence of the force expend¬ 
ed, a corresponding portion of muscle diminishes in 
volume.”! But the principal point of the first enquiry, 
is, whether muscular strength and the waste of museular 
tissue are supported and supplied by food in the ratio of 
the nitrogenous matter which the food yields on analysis? 
Fat, it will be seen, is reckoned among thesubstances 
wholly destitute of nitrogen; according to Liebig 5 s the¬ 
ory it contains no nutriment, and is incapable of sup¬ 
porting muscular action. If this is admitted, how shall 
we account for the superior value which fat meat is 
known to possess as food for the laboring man? The 
English or Irish laborer, whose food sometimes consists 
in a great degree of vegetables, such as potatoes, tur- 
sveps, and cabbages, finds his ability to perform labor 
or sustain muscular exertion greatly increased if he can 
contrive to add to his vegetable diet a quantity of clear 
fat pork or mutton, lard, or the suet of beef or mutton. 
Chemists inform us that the proportion of nitrogen in 
the vegtables above named, is very small—amounting 
in potatoes, which contain most, to only thirty-six hun¬ 
dredths of a pound in one hundred pounds!—and we 
know that the laborer cannot long sustain himself on 
these articles alone; yet by the aid of animal fat,— 
which it is said contains, not onlv less nutriment than 
the vegetables, but absolutely none at all, he is enabled 
to continue his labors, comparatively without fatigue! 
* Liebig’s Animal Chemistry, p. 35. | Animal Chemistry, p. 68. 
$ Boussingault. { 
The eastern and Canadian lumbermen, in securing 
their winter’s stock of provisions to take to the woods, 
procure the fattest meat which can be had, to eat with 
their bread and potatoes. Fishermen, and indeed the 
laboring men generally in the New-England and Nor¬ 
thern states, procure the fattest pork, which they pre¬ 
fer to any other kind of meat—especially as experi¬ 
ence has proved its superior adaptation to sustaining the 
body. 
Indian corn does not contain a large proportion of ni¬ 
trogen. According to the late analysis of Dr. Playfair, 
its proportion of protein, or nitrogenous matter, in 
100 parts is 7—giving less of what chemists call nutri¬ 
ment, than wheat, barley, or oats; yet the savage with 
his horn of bear’s oil, and pouch of parched corn, takes 
the most laborious exercise—fearlessly enters on war- 
expeditions against his enemies, where success depends 
greatly on muscular strength and power of endurance. 
Mr. Schoolcraft, in his late Report on the Iroquois, 
(page 150,)informs us that the Indians sometimes took 
with them on their former journeys, meal of parched 
corn and sugar derived from the sap of the maple; and 
he states that only one table-spoonful of this meal mixed 
with sugar and water, would sustain a warrior for 
twenty-four hours without other food. And yet, as we 
have seen, Indian corn is not very rich in nitrogen, and 
sugar, according to Liebig, is wholly destitute of nutri¬ 
ment, though he believes it may form fat. 
Again, in regard to the results of feeding swine with 
nitrogenized and non-nitrogenized food, Liebig asserts. 
“ A pig, when fed with highly nitrogenized food, be¬ 
comes full of flesh; when fed with potatoes, (starch,) 
it acquires little flesh but a thick layer of fat.”* 
On this subject we have a case exactly “ in point ” in 
swine fed on the offal of slaughter-houses. The offal 
of these establishments does not consist of fat, (for that 
is too valuable to give to hogs,) nor scarcely in any de¬ 
gree of substances of which fat, according to Liebig’s 
theory, could be formed—it is chiefly blood, membrane, 
and tendon. But do the facts furnished by this exam¬ 
ple sustain the conclusion that “swine fed on highly 
nitrogenized food” become particularly i( full of flesh ?” 
In the pork so produced, does the fat bear any less pro¬ 
portion to the lean than in hogs fattened in the ordi¬ 
nary manner? The common opinion on this subject is 
i known to be directly the reverse of Liebig’s; viz., that 
! instead of such pork being more hard and “ full of flesh,” 
it is more soft and oily than the common kind. I have 
conversed with butchers who have killed and sold in 
market many hogs fattened on slaughter-house offal, and 
they unhesitatingly state that the proportion of fat is as 
great, and that of lean, not greater than in hogs fattened 
on vegetable food. 
The idea is held by some that wild animals, especial¬ 
ly the carnivora, have no fat;f yet it is known that 
bears often acquire a degree of fatness scarcely surpassed 
even by the hog. They have been killed in their dens 
after a hybernation of five months, when the carcases 
have been found covered with a layer of fat of from one 
to two inches or more in thickness, and the kidneys also 
completely covered with it. 
Somewhat of connection with the point here under 
consideration, Liebig remarks that—“ in the entire class 
of carnivora, the food of which contains no substance 
devoid of nitrogen except fat, the production of fat in 
the body is utterly insignificant;” but he supposes that 
“ even in these animals, as in dogs and cats, it increases 
as soon as they live on a mixed diet;” and that “we 
can increase the formation of fat in other domestic ani¬ 
mals at pleasure, but only by means of food containing 
no nitrogen.” 
In reference to this it may be said that a considerable 
accumulation of fat in dogs is not unusual, even in those 
fed mostly on animal food. Indeed, butchers’ dogs, 
which live on this kind of food, are generally fattest. 
The writer has known at least one dog of most extraor¬ 
dinary size and fatness, whose food for years was almost 
entirely blood, which he lapped as it gushed warm 
* Animal Chemistry, page 32. 
t Animal Chemistry, page 31.—“The flesh of wild animals is 
devoid of fat.” 
