78 
COTTON-CAKE. 
to, says, “ After the foregoing pages were in type, I received 
a note from Mr. John Fryer, Manor House, Chatteris, en¬ 
closing 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 : 
“ Surgeon’spost-mortem examination. — f Internal and external 
appearance healthy, nothing inflammatory. Paunch enor¬ 
mously 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-shaped 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.” 
Again, Mr. James Crowhurst, M.R.C.V.S., of Canter¬ 
bury, in the Veterinarian of November, 1863, has published a 
case to which I beg to refer the reader, and in which it 
appears that whole-seed cotton-cake was the cause of the 
death of several animals. 
In addition to these published accounts of the injurious 
effects of the indigestible husks of cotton-seed, which appear 
in some cases to act as a mechanical irritant, similar testi¬ 
mony has frequently been verbally communicated to me, 
equally tending to prove that the undecorticated cake, if 
used for feeding purposes at all, should be given sparingly 
and cautiously, especially to young animals. 
The products of decorticated seed, i. e. of the kernels only, 
are of three kinds—thick and thin cake, and meal. Again 
instituting comparisons as with the whole-seed products 
(after dismissing the water from our consideration, as being, 
unimportant), we notice that in the decorticated products the 
amount of flesh-formers is 10 per cent., and the oil sometimes 
as much as 6 or 7 per cent, higher; the mucilage, &c., 8 or 10 
per cent., and the indigestible matter from 1 to 5 per cent, lower 
than in the Exhibition linseed-cake. The proportion of ash is 
about the same in all kinds of cotton-seed productions. The 
circumstance, therefore, which most arrest our attention is 
the comparative absence of indigestible material; and it 
must be observed that that which does exist in the varieties 
