138 BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 
that need only to be re-enforced with some appropriate addition in 
order that they may be used with great advantage as fodder. When, 
years ago, potatoes were abundant among us, how many farmers could 
have been found who had arrived at an irreproachable method of utiliz- 
ing at the farm the unsalable portion of this crop? The problem 
may have been solved perhaps upon some dairy farms where the refuse 
potatoes were fed out in conjunction with butter-milk, though even in 
this case it is probable that, in order to get a sufficient amount of albu- 
minoids, the animals had to consume a larger volume of food than was 
conducive to their best prosperity. 
Empirical devices, such. as this with the butter-milk, have been 
common in human experience. The use of butter-milk formerly by 
the Irish peasantry in conjunction with their potatoes, has been insisted 
on by many writers. In Alsatia also, according to Boussingault,* the 
peasantry always associated large quantities of sour or curdled milk 
with their potato diet. So, too, the Indians of the Upper Andes, as 
observed by, Boussingault, lived not upon potatoes alone, but upon a 
mixture of potatoes and a large quantity of cheese. ‘The old New 
England practice of making the bread of farm laborers, from a mix- 
ture of rye and Indian meal was, as it happened, based upon sound 
physiological principles as well as upon the results of experience. In 
like manner, the abundant use of baked beans and of cheese here in 
New England, in the days when but little meat, though much maize, 
was eaten, serves to attest the advantage of mixing the farinaceous 
and the flesh-like foods in suitable proportions. According to Payen,t 
the ordinary food of a Lombard peasant is 341bs. of Indian meal and 
somewhat more than an ounce of cheese, besides a couple of quarts or 
more of sour wine, per day. The use of lentils or other kinds of 
pulse, in conjunction with doura or maize meal, has often been noted by 
travellers in Egypt and in other eastern countries ; ¢ and in rice-eating 
countries, also, there is the same constant effort to supplement this 
highly farinaceous food with fish or pulse, or the cheese-like prod- 
uct obtained from pulse. 
In case the amount of flesh-like food added to the farinaceous is 
insufficient in quantity to convert the mixture into a ration of fit pro- 
* In his “Rural Economy,” New York, 1865, p. 409. 
t “Des Substances Alimentaires,” Paris, 1856, p. 327. 
t Compare in this connection the remark of Livingston, cited above, p. 101. 
