BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 143 
and horned cattle upon maize alone, in the comparatively inaccessible 
portions of our western States, though undoubtedly somewhat wasteful 
of the maize, may perhaps be the most economical method of utilizing 
the crop that could be devised for these particular localities, under the 
conditions of labor and capital, and with the means of transportation, 
that are to be found there. The object in feeding out the grain in 
this case is merely to concentrate the crop in the cheapest possible 
way to such an extent, or rather to bring it into such form, that it may 
be transported to a market with profit. According to Russell,* “the 
usual allowance for 100 pigs (fed in this way in Ohio) is eight bushels 
of shelled corn a day.” “The hogs were of good sorts, lazy, good- 
tempered-looking brutes, and getting into prime condition; their 
average weight would be about one hundred and sixty pounds.” 
From the chemical point of view, another method of disposing of 
the maize crop, which has often been adopted at the West, seems 
preferable to the foregoing. The distilling of whiskey from the corn, 
or, in other words, the conversion of the farinaceous portion of the 
maize into alcohol, removes those constituents which made it a one- 
sided fodder ; while the nitrogenous “ wash ” or swill that is left as a 
residuary product of the process may be fed to swine or neat cattle 
with advantage. It is evident, moreover, that the swill might be 
mixed with maize and with fodder-corn in such proportions as to form 
very judicious rations. 
It is true, in general, that, in case any farmer should propose to use 
in conjunction with maize some kind of fodder that is more highly 
nitrogenized, he ought to determine by calculation whether it would 
not be more economical in his particular locality to let some of the 
constituents of the maize go to waste, as they must in most instances 
when the grain is fed out by itself, than to be at the cost of pro- 
curing the nitrogenous food. 
Suppose, for example, that upon a given farm 20 bushels of peas 
could be grown to the acre, or 50 bushels of maize. The comparative 
cost of getting the 1,200 lbs. (20 & 60) of the one, or the 2,800 Ibs. 
(50 56) of the other crop, year after year, would have to be con- 
sidered ; and the value of the straw and stalks from each crop, as 
well as the chemical facts that such a pea crop would yield, on the 
_ * “North America; its Climate and Agriculture,” by Robert Russell, Edin- 
burgh, 1857, p. 79. 
