FERMENTED AND COOKED FOOD.

A comparison between fermented and cooked food is given in the following experiment: Four heifers, practically equal in all respects, and six pigs, from one family, were selected. The ten animals were separated into equal lots by alternate choice, and were weighed at the commencement of the experiment and weekly during its continuance. Those in the one lot were fed with fermented food; the others with cooked food. During the first week the amount of fermented food eaten was less than the quantity of cooked food consumed, and the animals fed on the fermented material made the greater increase of live weight. During the second week those on the cooked food made a steady progress; those on the fermented food scarce any. The apparent success of the latter during the first week was actually the result of an accumulation of undigested matter in the intestines. The experiment was continued three weeks, those fed on the cooked food thriving and increasing, the others not. There was a difference in the return of the lots of pigs, in favor of those fed on cooked food, of £1 7s. 3d.

FATTENING HOGS.

Results of Experiments by S. H. Clay, Bourbon County, Kentucky.Other conditions being similar, one bushel of dry corn made five pounds ten ounces of live pork; one bushel of boiled corn, fourteen pounds seven ounces of pork; one bushel of ground corn, boiled, made, in one instance, sixteen pounds seven ounces; in another, nearly eighteen pounds of pork. Estimating the pork at eight cents per pound, one bushel of dry corn made 45 cents' worth of pork; one bushel of boiled corn, $1 14 worth of pork; and one bushel of ground corn, boiled, $1 30 worth of pork.

Respecting these experiments, a western agricultural journal remarks that the question of the advisability of grinding and cooking food must be considered in connection with the circumstances of locality; such, for instance, as cost of grinding, expense of labor and fuel. The sug gestion is made that the method practiced by many in Kentucky may be best adapted to the majority of cases in the West, viz., of turning the hogs into an unharvested field when commencing to fatten; then, after a few weeks, feeding them on corn in the ear till they are pretty well fattened; and then feeding on corn-meal till they are in prime marketable condition.

According to experiments made by the late Professor Mapes, in New Jersey, it required thirty pounds of raw corn to make as much pork as thirteen pounds of cooked meal would produce.

The purport of certain experiments with five pigs during the past year, by a New England farmer, may be exhibited by taking his statements as to pigs No. 1 and No. 5. No. 1, taken from the sow at four months of age, was supplied with two and a half quarts of corn or meal, three times a day, and about the same quantity of milk, continued as long as the pigs lived, and made eleven pounds of pork to the bushel. No, 5, other conditions being equivalent, received three and a half quarts per day, and produced seven and a half pounds of pork to the bushel. The farmer thinks he did not get so much pork as he should if he had kept the pig on three quarts per day. After experimenting for several years in feeding pigs, he holds that they should not be allowed a superabundant proportion of fluid food, but rather be treated with a regular and more substantial diet, commencing when they are taken from the sow; and

also that a certain quantity of corn or meal per day should not be exceeded.

At the Michigan Agricultural College, in 1866, experiments were made in feeding three thorough-bred Essex pigs, which were weighed when eleven days old, and afterwards allowed all the milk they would consume. The total weight of the three at the time just mentioned was fourteen and a half pounds. Similar experiments were made in 1868 with corresponding results, showing that the younger the pig the more it will eat in proportion to its live weight, and also the more rapidly it will gain in proportion to the food it consumes. The subjoined table shows the amount of milk consumed at different times, in making one pound increase in live weight:

VALUES OF DIFFERENT FOOD MATERIALS.

However useful as a means of comparison, chemical analysis alone is not able to determine with sufficient exactness the values of different food materials; and a really satisfactory decision can be reached only through actual experience. The following table, prepared by Professo Tanner, of England, represents the composition of various materials used for food of animals, and their feeding value as demonstrated in practice:

In actual application these estimates of value are modified by various considerations. Some of these are stated by Professor Voelcker as follows: 1st. The age of the animal; young animals, especially, requiring a large proportion of nitrogenized matter and bone-forming material. 2d. The kind of animal; (the food best suited to horses is not always best for cows or sheep.) 3d. The natural disposition or temper of the animal. 4th. The purpose for which the animal is kept-as whether for fattening, or for work, or for milk. The digestibility of the food, also, demands attention. Professor Voelcker states a few of the conditions

affecting it: 1st. The kind of animal, cows more readily assimilating the nutriment of cut straw than horses. 2d. The amount and character of woody fibre contained in the food. 3d. The amount of flesh-forming substances. 4th. The bulk of the food. 5th The form in which it is presented to the animal; whether cut, or not cut, cooked or raw, &c.

EXPERIMENTS WITH FERTILIZERS.

The subjoined statement of experiments made by Mr. Levi Bartlett, of Warner, New Hampshire, with superphosphate of lime and other concentrated manures, gives an idea of the effect of these fertilizers upon the granite soil of New Hampshire.

Within the past few years large numbers of the farmers in that section of the country have made free use of the superphosphate of lime for manurial purposes, and generally with paying results; so much so that its use is annually increasing. The reasons why a few hundred pounds per acre, applied to the land planted with corn, potatoes, turnips, beans, and clover, usually exhibit such favorable results, is supposed to be owing to the restoration, to long cultivated fields, of those phosphates so necessary in the production of cultivated crops, but which have been, year after year, abstracted from them. Each crop grown and removed from the land carries with it certain well-known mineral plant food. In the usual routine of farming pursued in the region referred to, but small portions of these mineral ingredients of crops ever find their way back to the soil whence they were derived; and sooner or later the crops diminish in product from lack of appropriate food. Potash, lime, magnesia, phosphoric acid, and sulphuric acid are absolutely necessary for the life of agricultural plants, as is demonstrated by all the experiments hitherto made for studying their influence. These, with a few other minerals, constitute the ash of plants. Were it possible for a plant to grow, flower, and bear seed, without the co-operation of mineral matters, it would be utterly valueless to man or animals, because these minerals are as absolutely necessary in the food of man and animals as they are in the soils. A deficiency of them in either case leads to a stunted growth, enervation, and premature death. Phosphoric acid and lime are indispensable in the formation of the bones of animals, and no other combination of lime and acid can be substituted. Potash, soda, sulphur, iron, &c., enter into the composition of animals in very small proportion when contrasted with the amount of phosphate of lime required to build up their bony skeletons. Professor Liebig says: "In an ox of 550 pounds' weight there are 183 pounds of bones, containing nearly 120 pounds of phosphate of lime; in the flesh, hide, and other parts of the animal, 15 pounds of phosphate." Professor Johnston says: "For every cow it maintains, a dairy farm will annually lose of earthy phosphates as much as is contained in 56 pounds of bone-dust."

A large portion of the farms in New England have been under culti vation from one hundred to two hundred years, and the phosphates required in the formation of the bones of all tho animals, bipeds and quadrupeds, raised upon these farms, have come directly from their soils. By the agency of the various food-crops grown upon them during this long period, a deficiency of phosphates exists in the soil of thousands of these farms. This is so manifest that the most skeptical admit it.

The only feasible method of restoring the needed phosphates is by the application of ground bone, or what is better, the soluble superphosphate of lime. The above citation from Professor Liebig shows the enormous

excess of phosphate of lime in animal structures over all other of the inorganic constituents entering into their composition. Something analogous holds good in the inorganic constituents of certain cultivated crops, especially the cereals. The mean results of thirty-two analyses, by Professors Way and Ogston, show that "wheat contains some lime, but only very little, much less than is generally supposed, not more than one ounce in a bushel of grain (and a little more in the straw,) while it contains rather more soda than lime, about five times as much magnesia, nearly nine times as much potash, and more than thirteen times as much phosphoric acid." This acid is found in the ash of plants in combination with lime, potash, soda, &c.

These prefatory remarks are made with especial reference to the beneficial action of a good superphosphate of lime on the long-cropped soils of New England. Such applications are not needed on the fertile soils of the West, which have been under cultivation but a few years. But the time will come, sooner or later, when many of these productive lands will feel the want of the phosphates which have been so lavishly drawn from them year after year in their wheat and corn crops, with no adequate returns of manure of any kind.

Some may ask, "Can the fertility of annually cropped soils be kept up by the application of superphosphates and other concentrated manures?" Perhaps it may, but the safer way for the farmer is, to use these commercial manures in conjunction with the farm-yard and other manurial resources of the farm. This is the course pursued by many of the most successful cotton growers of Georgia, some of whom annually expend thousands of dollars in the purchase of guano and other commercial manures. A similar course is pursued by the wheat and root growing farmers of England.

Carefully conducted experiments, by Mr. Lawes, of England, on manuring grass lands, with a great variety of manures, animal, vegetable, and mineral, indicate that, practically speaking, stable or farm-yard manure is a much more perfect and economical restorer of the constituents removed in the hay crop than are the so-called artificial manures. But experience shows that, even when farm-yard manure is used, activity of growth is frequently increased if direct phosphatic manures be also employed. Phosphoric acid may be advantageously and economically applied either in the form of Peruvian guano, which at the same time supplies a large quantity of ammonia or ammonia-yielding matter, and a little potash also, or a superphosphate of lime. Mr. Lawes says: "There can be no progressive agriculture without farm stock; consequently, without stock, no manures."

Mr. Bartlett's report of experiments is as follows:

"Having the past season experimented with several different brands of superphosphates and other concentrated manures, I herewith report the results. Wishing to test the worth of various manures on different crops on my farm, about the 20th of May I turned over, with a good plow, ninety rods of green-sward, a fair quality of corn-land, a part of which was planted with a small variety of eight-rowed corn. The rows across the land contained twenty-two hills each-hills three by three feet apart. The first two rows had a small spoonful of Duncan & McKellar's Glasgow Company fertilizer applied to each hill-yield, 38 pounds; two rows Cumberland, Portland, Maine, 36 pounds; two rows Rhodes & Co.'s ammoniated, 40 pounds; Rhodes' standard, 371⁄2 pounds; two rows of Andrew Coe's, 34 pounds; two rows Coxsackie, New York, 33 pounds; two rows mineral superphosphate, 39 pounds. All of the above-named were superphosphates, equal quantities of each applied in the hill, and

slightly covered with soil before dropping the corn. Two rows of ashes and fine bone-dust, wetted with water six weeks previously, yielded 30 pounds; two rows, fine hen-dung, 36 pounds; two rows Peruvian guano, 30 pounds; two rows, hen-manure and dry ashes, 36 pounds; two rows, fish-pomace or guano, 27 pounds; two rows, sulphate of ammonia, (put too much in the hills-some of the seed failed to come up,) yield, 24 pounds; two rows, one-third of each having Cuban guano, Alta Vela guano, and Baker's Island guano, yield, 34 pounds; two rows, seed soaked in the French liquid fertilizer' for 24 hours previous to planting, yield, 26 pounds; two rows, without manure, 25 pounds. The corn was husked in the field October 20, each two rows weighed soon as husked, and noted down as above. Soft corn there was none; the smallest nubbins were thoroughly ripened. I do not think the above is a perfectly fair record of the intrinsic value of the different manures, for the cut-worms destroyed many plants in some of the rows, and a heavy shower, attended with wind, about the time the corn was fairly in the milk, prostrated a portion of it, thereby much lessening the yield.

"Some of our farmers, who experimented with different brands of superphosphates on corn, on different and better corn-soils, realized different and much more favorable results; and so pleased are they with these results that they will purchase largely of superphosphates for their corn and other farm-crops the coming season.

"The remainder of the ninety rods of land was planted with the Orono potato-planted 26th of May; rows twenty-two hills long. The four south rows received a spoonful of Andrew Coe's superphosphate to each hill; fifth row, no manure; then four rows, Portland superphosphate; next row, no manure; every fifth row without manure; four rows, hen manure; four rows, fish, guano; four rows, Coxsackie phosphate; and so on, till the field was planted. The four rows without manure through the field averaged two bushels, each set of four rows not varying over half a peck; the manured rows averaged three bushels, varying with the different manures to each four rows from two and a half to a little over three bushels-the fish guano giving the largest yield and fairest tubers.

"Another plat of sixty rods, green-sward, soil sandy loam, was planted with Orono potatoes 26th of May. The following kinds of manures were used, a spoonful in the hill, viz: Duncan & McKellar's phosphated guano, Rhodes's ammoniated, and his standard superphosphate, Peruvian guano, fish pomace, hen manure, Portland superphosphate, ashes, and fine bone-dust-four rows of each, and four rows without manure; the remainder of the patch nearly a repetition of the foregoing. The result may be summed up in a few words. The yield of the manured rows varied somewhat, but the increase, as a whole, where the manures were used, was fully fifty per cent. over the unmanured, The Peruvian guano gave the largest yield, but the tubers were much more prongy and misshapen. Potatoes at harvest-time were worth about 75 cents per bushel; at that price, I think, the commercial manures used paid well. The whole season was a very wet one; perhaps in a very dry season the result might have been different. I planted some twenty rods with the same kind of potatoes on highly manured land, in corn the previous year; the potatoes were very large, misshapen, prongy tubers, badly diseased, and of poor quality for table use.

"On corn, where a fair dressing of manure was applied, phosphate sown broadcast and applied in the hill, increased the crop, and very much hastened its ripening. On white beans, it doubled the yield, and hastened the ripening at least ten days."