BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 155 
oil-cake as foddering materials should not be lost sight of, even if 
these substances, when incautiously used, are peculiarly liable to do 
positive harm, as regards the quality of the milk or the butter obtained 
from the animals that have been fed with them. The facts that 
turnip-tops are highly nitrogenized and are excellent food for cattle 
are fixed and permanent, no matter if the tops do, even more 
than turnips themselves, sometimes impart an abominable flavor to the 
milk of cows that have eaten them. ‘The moral to be drawn is not 
that such foods should be banished from the farm, but that the limita- 
tions to which each particular food is subject should be accurately 
made out and allowed for. 
Not only should the best possible way of using each kind of food be 
determined, but all the circumstances and conditions under which a 
given food may be used with advantage. Many a material that would 
be dangerous if administered carelessly, or in too large quantity, will 
do excellent service when used in small proportion as an addition to 
other food. Above all, pains should be taken to find out upon each and 
every farm the best possible fodder mixtures for that particular farm. 
The cases mentioned above, where flesh in the form of greaves or 
cracklings or chandlers’ scraps was used with advantage for feeding 
swine, are but as one instance among many that might be cited in 
favor of the use of animal food. Crampe, in a lecture upon this 
subject, has urged that, in the old days when swine were fattened upon 
mast in Europe, much importance was attached to the so-called 
“ worm-mast,” as well as to that afforded by acorns and beech-nuts. 
It had been often observed, in fact, that it was not the nuts alone that 
fattened the swine; but that the snails, worms, insects, &c., that were 
consumed by the animals, had an appreciable influence in promoting 
their growth. It was an accepted creed in Germany that, after a 
snowless winter with hard frosts, the autumn would be bad for masting 
swine, no matter how abundant or how excellent might be the crop of 
acorns and beech-nuts; the inference being that so many snails and 
insects and larve of insects were destroyed during the severe winter 
by the freezing of the soil, that the supply of animal food for the 
swine was insufficient to enable them to fully profit by the nuts. 
This point would appear to be particularly well taken, since nut-mast 
of milk and butter, and for statements of means of avoiding the unpleasant 
taste, see “ Eighth Report of the Secretary of Connecticut Board of Agricul- 
ture,” 1874-75, pp. 83-43. 
