BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 137 
No. 18.— Remarks on American Fodder Rations, with Hints 
for the Improvement of some of them. By F. H. Storer, 
Professor of Agricultural Chemistry. 
A very slight examination of the agricultural literature of this 
country will be sufficient to show that our farmers have been slow to 
grasp the conception that, other things being equal, mixtures of fodders 
of unlike kinds are in general better fitted for the profitable feeding of 
cattle than the exclusive use of any one kind of food taken singly and 
by itself. 
In spite of several highly pertinent and valuable articles * upon the 
subject which have been published during the last few years, a vast 
amount of ignorance still exists in our midst with regard to the prin- 
ciples which determine what kinds of foods may be mixed; and there 
is a lamentable lack of appreciation of the fact that, but for the dis- 
covery of these principles, not merely the mixing of rations, but the 
whole subject of feeding animals, must necessarily have remained a 
matter of the blindest empiricism. 
The comparatively small amount of attention that has been given by 
our people to these inquiries is the more remarkable, in view of the 
fact that tolerably correct views prevail almost everywhere among us 
with regard to the special attributes of many kinds of foods. The 
farinaceous character of rice and potatoes for example, and the flesh- 
like character of peas and beans are well known to almost every one. 
Few Americans need to be told that it is impossible to support the life 
of any animal upon simple starch or sugar; or that in case foods, which 
are particularly rich in starch, such as rice or potatoes, were used alone, 
very large quantities of them must be eaten because of their one-sided 
character ; or, in other words, because of the absence from them of a 
proper proportion of the flesh-forming constituents of food. But 
great numbers of our people seem to have no just appreciation of the 
fact that the rice and the potatoes are really admirable kinds of foods, 
* Compare the tables at the end of Professor Johnson’s “ How Crops Grow,” 
New York, 1868; Professor Atwater’s articles in the “American Agriculturist,” 
for 1875, ’76 and ’77; Mr. A. W. Putnam’s Prize Essay in the Transactions 
of the Essex (Mass.) Agric. Soc, 1876, p. 121; and other papers, by various 
writers, in the leading agricultural journals. 
