208 STORRS AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 
feeding of domestic animals for profit involves consideration of 
the cost of the raw material, namely, the food; the cost of the 
machine and its running, the animal and its care; and the value 
of the product, be it growth, meat, milk or work. But he had 
taken the pains to talk with some practical men as well as with 
chemists, physiologists and experts, upon the subject, in Europe 
and especially in Germany. He had gathered the ideas just 
suggested and he did try; however imperfectly, to insist upon 
these cautions while attempting to explain the fundamental 
principles of nutrition, the composition of foods and feeding 
stuffs and the use of standards for rations and dietaries. And it 
is with a sentiment akin to pain that he peruses the statements 
so constantly reiterated, in so many places, by so many men, and 
with so little qualification; implying that there is something 
absolute in feeding standards and in tables of composition of 
feeding stuffs and that what the feeder has to do is to consult 
his feeding standard and his tables of composition, apply his 
mathematics, feed his cattle accordingly, and then hope for 
profit. 
Analyses of feeding stuffs and feeding standards are useful, 
incalculably so. I venture the assertion. that, aside from im- 
proved breeds, the thing which has done most to help the stock 
grower and the dairymen in our older States is the improved 
system of feeding which the use of this very doctrine has done 
more than anything else to bring about. The danger is in the 
blind, unthinking use of the theory. 
THE SETTING UP OF WRONG STANDARDS. 
The formulas for rations of domestic animals most commonly 
quoted are those of the German experimenter, Wolff. One rea- 
son for the popularity of Wolff’s formulas, and perhaps the chief, 
is that they are so simple and so easily quoted and followed. 
Another is doubtless found in the fact that they have so long 
been a feature of the famous German Farmers’ Almanac ( JZent- 
zel und v. Lengerke’s Landwirtschaftlicher Kalender), which in 
that country is much more common among farmers than the 
Bible and, it is tobe feared, much more consulted by them. The 
less definite and more conservative formulas and tables of com- 
position of feeding stuffs of Julius Kiihn* are more: generally 

* See Kiihn’s discussion of the subject of feeding standards in Experiment Station Record, 
volume IV., page 11. 

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