156 BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 
is a highly farinaceous food. The proportion of albuminoids to carbo- 
hydrates is no more than 1 to 18 in acorns, and 1 to 15 in chestnuts. 
The significance of insects in the food of poultry, and particularly in 
that of turkeys, has often been commented upon ;-and so has the habit 
of sheep and neat-cattle of eating fish in several poor countries that 
border upon the sea.* Several examples of the systematic use of 
flesh-meal for feeding animals have recently been reported from 
Europe; but there is little need of looking abroad for evidence upon 
this subject, in view of the experience of a number of farmers in 
Maine, who, for some years past, have fed sheep, swine, and horned 
cattle upon dried fish-scrap with great advantage. In the “ Report of 
the Secretary of the Maine Board of Agriculture,” for 1869, 14. 60, 
Mr. Wilder states his experience as follows :— 
‘‘From careful observations, close calculation, and long experience in 
sheep raising, I have come to the conclusion that fish offal used as food 
for sheep, is not only cheaper, but much superior to any other kind of 
provender I have ever used. I keep about one hundred sheep, have fed 
fish offal to them for the last ten years, and I have wintered my sheep for 
the last three winters on threshed straw, with one half pound per day to 
each sheep of dried fish pomace or one pound of green (as it shrinks one- 
half in drying), and they come out in the spring in much better condition 
than when fed on good English hay with Indian corn. . . . The fish offal 
which I use is made from herrings, caught in weirs, seined and dipped 
into boats, then taken to the press-house, where they are salted the same 
as for smoking; after which they are cooked, and the oil pressed out, 
leaving a pomace for which sheep are more eager than for grain.”? Mr. 
Wilder states, furthermore, that in his experience both the fleeces and the 
carcasses of the sheep fed with the fish scrap are heavier than those 
from sheep that have been fed with hay and maize. 
In the following year,f Mr. Wasson, of Ellsworth, speaking of his 
experience with fish scrap as cattle food, said : — 
‘‘T am experimenting now for the second year in the use of ‘chum’ 
as we call it, or refuse porgie (Alosa mendaden), as food for sheep and 
poultry, substituting it for Indian corn and turnips. I have been feeding 
for several years turnips and corn to my sheep, and my experience thus 
far is that pound for pound, as a provender for sheep, the ‘ chum’ is worth 
as muchas corn. An acquaintance of mine has been experimenting for two 
years or more, in feeding it to his milch cows. He has abandoned that now 
* For an example, at Provincetown, on Cape Cod, in our own State, see 
“New England Farmer,” 1827, 6. 145. 
t “ Report Sec. Maine Board of Agriculture,” 1870, 15. pp. 30-84. 
