. 
New York AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. at 
local advantage, which even a change of location or other condi- 
tion might not modify. | 
I have already disclaimed any intention in our investigation of 
entering upon feeding experiments other than those incidental 
to our work. In our ordinary practice we use in winter feeding, 
besides different havs, roots and ensilage, and during the grow- 
ing season hay and various forage crops, with more or less grain 
continuously, and are enabled thus to study the effect of the 
_.several rations fed, as has been already shown in another porti n 
of this report; but the aim has always been to give what would 
be admitted to be a good ration, differing as it naturally would 
in the different seasons, rather than to study certain rations 
the effect of which was to be determined. Therefore it 
rarely if ever hanpens that a single grain feed has been given, 
but varying mixtures of those most convenient for feeding and 
introducing such changes as seemed desirable. In this manner 
there has accumulated a vast amount of data, indirectly ascer- 
tained, as We may say, in our investigations, but none the less 
valuable, as tending to throw light upon the question of food 
rations, and this data it is proposed to present from time to time, 
in bulletins, as the work progresses. 
Finally I can not refrain from again quoting from an address- 
made many years ago by Professor Samuel W. Johnson, the vete 
ran director of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station 
of New Haven, who in urging the importance of such an investi- 
gation as has been now for several years in progress at this 
Station, declared: “In some scientific books the opinion is con- 
fidently put forth that if you increase the quantity of fat in 
the fodder you increase the relative quantity of butter in the milk. 
It is a matter of some consequence to know these things. When 
we have made four or five series of careful experiments in which 
we have weighed the milk in all its parts; the fat, casein, the 
sugar and salts, separately, and we have weighed the food in all 
its parts in the same manner, so that we know exactly what 
is went into the cow and what came out of her, we are in a position 
to know what are the facts. Itis not my opinion or your opinion, 
it is not a case of “I guess so,’ or ‘It can’t be otherwise,’ all that 
has little real value unless there be behind it an evident basis of 
—- impregnable facts.” 

4 
a ee oe 
- 
