206 STORRS AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION, — 
The remark was lately made in the presence of a well-known 
Connecticut farmer that such expressions as protein, fat and 
carbohydrates, nutritive ratios, and standards for daily rations, 
which are. to-day very familiar in the columns of the papers and 
in the discussions in agricultural meetings, were Greek to farmers 
in our State twenty years ago. ‘Say Sanskrit,” said he. “We 
knew then that there was such a language as Greek, but we had 
never heard of these things.” Nowadays the papers that treat of 
dairying and cattle-feeding refer to protein and carbohydrates 
and feeding standards as familiarly as to Jerseys, silos, and cot- 
ton seed meal. Not only that, but people are becoming interested 
to know the composition and properties of human food. Stand- 
ards for daily dietaries are being widely quoted as authoritative, 
and, what is even more to the point, the United States Congress 
has provided an appropriation to be used for investigations of 
the economy of the food of man, based upon the same principle 
as the studies that are carried out by our Experiment Stations 
upon the food and nutrition of domestic animals. The eagerness 
of a large and rapidly increasing body of people to get hold of 
the statistics of the composition of food and of daily rations, 
standards for dietaries and the like, is interesting as it is encour- 
aging. All this, it seems to me, marks the beginning of a 
hygienic and economic improvement, if not reform, in our food 
economy. 
For all this progress, wide spread, rapid, and I may add 
inspiring, let us be profoundly thankful. If the twenty years — 
just passed have seen so much accomplished, what may not be 
hoped for in the twenty years to come? 
But this subject has another side. The modern doctrine of 
food and nutrition as applied to the nourishment of domestic 
animals and man is in danger of being misapplied. Indeed, it is 
being misapplied and to an extent already serious. To one who 
may claim to be a veteran in the campaign for the advance of 
research and of knowledge in these directions in the United 
States, it may be permitted to sound a note of warning. : 
The evils are practically three; the failure to recognize what 
feeding and dietary standards are and ought to be, the setting up 
of incorrect standards, and the blind and thoughtless use of such 
standards in the calculating of rations and dietaries. I will 
speak of these in the inverse order, taking the last first. 
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