360 BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 
From Danvers:* ‘‘ The straw of barley and oats is equivalent to one- 
third the quantity of upland hay.” 
From Dunstable:+ ‘‘ Rye-straw is little esteemed for fodder. Oat- 
straw is equivalent to one-fourth or one-sixth its quantity of upland hay 
for fodder.”’ 
These loose and conflicting surmises are interesting, inasmuch as they 
serve to show how small an advance towards any real and definite 
conclusion as to the fodder-worth of straw had been made by our 
farmers at that time. Although it can hardly be said that the general. 
tenor of the statements is in accord either with the results of analysis 
or with the foddering practices of the country, it will nevertheless be 
noticed that a large part of the answers do agree with these evidences 
in ranking bog hay decidedly above straw, and so lend to them a cer- 
tain share of support. 
_ In the light of the evidence thus far presented, there can indeed be 
little doubt but that our salt and fresh hays possess considerable value 
as fodder. ‘They constitute one important resource for the farmers of 
New England, which will doubtless be availed of in the future as in 
the past, and the more fully in proportion as their real significance is 
more clearly understood. There are few more interesting problems 
for the farmers of any region to work out than those which relate to the 
judicious utilization of the comparatively speaking innutritious kinds 
of food that are produced upon the farm, and which are too coarse and 
bulky to be merchantable. Such problems have lost much of their 
former difficulty in these days of cheap transportation, when, besides 
the old resource of root crops, grain, bran-feed, cotton-seed meal, and 
other waste products may be bought almost everywhere; and they are 
of course specially easy when the rough forage is in itself fairly good, 
as the bog and salt hays appear to be when contrasted with the straw 
that is so large a component of many of the fodder mixtures of Europe. 
It would seem to be plain that there are many places in New Eng- 
land where it would be not merely a good practice, but really excellent 
farming, to feed out upon the farm the hay from coarse, natural herbage, 
with the addition of small quantities of some of the concentrated forms 
of food, and to send off the farm, in so far as might be practicable, the 
more costly upland hay, to be marketed like any other merchantable 
* Mass. Repository and Journal, 1815, 3. 339. 
T Ibid., 1815, 4, 46. 
