BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION, 81 
No. 8.— On the Composition of certain Pumpkins and 
Squashes. By F. H. Storer, Professor of Agricultural 
Chemistry. 
THE common yellow field pumpkin has always been conspicuous in 
the agriculture of New England, where it is highly esteemed for feed- 
ing cattle and swine during the autumn and early winter, or as long as 
it can be preserved from decay. 
‘¢ Pumpkins are raised especially for the use of cows and fatting cattle. 
They increase and enrich the milk, whether for butter or cheese.’? (New 
England Farmer, 1829, 7%. 225.) ‘' They are valuable as affording an 
early supply of food, for feeding horses and fattening all sorts of cattle in 
the fall and fore part of the winter before the ruta-baga crop should be 
used. If steam-boiled, they are a rich food for swine.’’ (New England 
Farmer, 1827, 5. 294.) ‘‘ For feeding to milch cows in the fall, we do 
not know of a better article according to their cost; for feeding to beef 
cattle they are excellent, and when boiled and mixed with a little Indian 
meal, they excel most kinds of food for feeding hogs.’’ (New England 
Farmer, 1831, 9. 341.) ‘‘ For producing rich milk, the old-fashioned 
yellow field pumpkin is one of the very best articles that can be given to 
cows. Fed raw to hogs, pumpkins are useful by increasing the appetite. 
They will fatten young fall beef, and give fatting oxen a better start than 
either potatoes or turnips.’? (New England Farmer, 1844, 22. 372. ) 
The cultivation of the pumpkin seems to have been inherited from 
the Indians* by the first settlers of the country, together with that of 
maize, and to have been persisted in thenceforth by our farmers, in 
spite of the competition of other kinds of crops that might have been 
cultivated in its place. It is noticeable, moreover, both of Indian corn 
and of pumpkins, that the cultivation of them here in New England 
has been kept up in good measure even to the present time; and that 
the great changes in the agriculture of the region, brought about of 
late years through the importation of cattle, grain, and fodder from the 
Western and Southern States, have been powerless to exclude either 
of these familiar plants from our fields. 
It is manifest that, in order to the right understanding of the agri- 
culture of this country, the composition of both these crops should be 
clearly ascertained. In respect to Indian corn, this knowledge has 
* Compare T. W. Harris, in “ New England Farmer,” and U. S. Patent Office 
Report, 1854, p. 208. 
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