application of manure, you may coax an ample crop of turnips, and may feel yourself much at your ease as to the mode of using them, as you may draw them off, or consume them on the land, in all weathers. On land which, however well drained, has an inclination to be sticky, you must make up your mind to have more trouble with your green crops; but if used tenderly, it will give you a heavy weight of mangold-wurzel, turnips, or cabbage. They should, however, be sown early, for you will have no comfort with them if they remain on the land after November.

So we dispose of all articles in general use for cattlefeeding-except oil-cake. It is amenable to no local facilities, and is just as applicable to one situation as to another. In spite of repeated denunciations it maintains its ground. The popular tradition respecting it is singular. For many years linseed-crushers threw what they considered as the refuse of the mill to the manure-heap. A cottager's lanefed cow, having access to one of these heaps, was observed to be frequently feeding at it; and she gave evidence by the sleekness of her coat and the increased fulness of the pail that the food was highly beneficial. So it came into use, and was soon found to produce fat as no article had ever produced it before. Veterans of our standing will remember the denunciation of cake-fed beef. It had an unnatural taste-the shambles where it prevailed had an unnatural smell-the grain was coarse-the fat was liquid or rancid-the meat would not keep-and so forth. Now Mr. Giblett or Mr. Slater gives 6d. per Smithfield stone extra for a Norfolk-fed Scot (the animal of all in the market which has eat the most oil-cake), simply because they dare not send any other sort of beef to the nobility and gentry who are their customers. No other article of food (except perhaps bean-meal, which has the disadvantage of making the flesh hard) gives to a butcher the same full confidence that the dead weight of an animal will be fully equal to his appearance when alive. All the pre

judices against this food were founded on the three letters OIL. Persons who are prejudiced neither investigate nor reason, or they would have discovered that linseed-cake consists of the husks and farinaceous parts of linseed from which all the oil has been expressed by most powerful machinery; and that though the quantity of oil expressed from a given quantity of seed has been constantly on the increase in consequence of improvements in the machinery, there has been no corresponding, nor indeed any, decrease in the fat-producing properties of the cake. A more refined investigation would have informed them that a ton of cake contains less oil than a ton of any sort of grain. The same delusion which appalled the consumers delighted the producers of beef. They fancied that it was about to lead them to an important discovery. They argued, not illogically" If the remains of oil in this article of cake have such great feeding properties, how vast must they be before any oil has been expressed from it!"

Forty years ago we saw at Bretby, under the charge of Mr. Blackie, and at Swarkestone Lowes, then occupied by Mr. Smith, the earliest systematic stall-feeder in the midland counties, considerably extensive preparations for crushing, and steaming, and steeping linseed. Some other feeders went a step further, and said, "If oil adulterated with husks, &c., is so feeding, how much more feeding must oil unadulterated be!" and they gave the oil neat. But all the parties soon relinquished such practice. The result did not bear out the à priori reasoning. The beasts so fed never got very fat, and the fat they had was very loose and oleaginous. Experience soon showed that neither linseed nor oil could be used with advantage until they were let down by a very large admixture of chopped straw or of some other low qualitied matter. On this experience the recently-renewed practice of feeding with linseed (of which Mr. Warnes is the apostle) is founded. We give the account of the preparation in his own words :-" One pailful of linseed-meal to eight of water." This makes a

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jelly. "A large tub being conveniently placed, a bushel of pea-straw or turnip-tops cut into chaff is put in; two or three hand-cupsful of the jelly are poured in," stirred up, &c. Another bushel of the turnip-tops, chaff, &c., is next added;" and so on till the tub is full. And besides this, when Mr. Warnes begins to have a near view of the butcher, he adds "barley or pea-meal to the mixture." The prejudices against cake are now exploded. It has a fair hearing, and stands or falls on its merits. No doubt it is expensive food; but it is so effective, so clean, so easily stored, and so much less liable to pilfering than any sort of meal, that we expect to see it stand its ground.

When farmers have determined on the description of food, how are they to give it?-hot or cold? cooked or raw? We have seen an argument as follows (we have not space to extract the passage, but we will state the argument fairly):-A certain sustained temperature of body is necessary to the health and growth of every animal. Liebig has shown that this animal heat is produced and sustained by combustion-oxygen inhaled into the lungs burns carbon which it finds in the blood-if it does not find carbon enough in the blood it seizes on the carbon which exists in the fat, and if there be no fat then on the carbon in the muscle of the body. Food supplies the carbon to the blood, and through the blood to the fat and muscle. If you introduce a quantity of cold food into the stomach of an animal you lower the temperature of its body. The first duty of the food so introduced will be to furnish as much carbon for combustion as will restore the normal heat, and the residue only can be applied to making fat and muscle. If you give warm food, the quantity required for the above purpose will be smaller, and the resi due applicable to fat and muscle will be larger. Therefore there is a waste of food in giving it cold. We detect no flaw in this reasoning: but a sort of instinct founded on long experience always prompts us to look out for practical qualifications of abstract reasoning. We were just pre

paring to say to the reasoner-" Before we can consent to found our practice on your argument, you must prove to us that burning the extra food in the body is not the cheapest way of restoring the heat destroyed. Charge yourself with the very considerable outlay requisite for warming the food -with the fuel-with the labour and waste: take into account that, when you have heated your food, it will cool very rapidly while it is before the beasts; that it will cool very rapidly while it is being divided into portions; that any which is left must be heated over again." We were just going to say, "When you have taken all this into the reckoning, tell us the result," when we stumbled on the following passage in an account of the Cattle Lodge at Howick :-"The opinion of the feeder is, that the animals did not thrive so well on steamed straw as when it was given naturally. We believe that, with the exception of linseed-if, according to Mr. Warnes' experiment, that is an exception-it will not be found that the cooking food for cattle, even if it be beneficial, will repay the extra cost," &c. Remembering that Mr. Warnes has been the great advocate for warm and cooked food, we turned back to his experiment, and we find as follows:-Eight Scots shut up in October: four fed "on the cold linseed mucilage;" "the other four have had boiled linseed." "His own opinion, and that of many other farmers who have seen the animals, is, that the four fed on raw linseed are superior to their competitors." Mr. Warnes says, "But admitting the fattening properties of both systems to be equal, the cold must possess the greater advantages-1st, because firing is dispensed with," &c. And again, "So satisfied has Mr. Warnes become of the superiority of the cold linseed, that he means at once to adopt it in the feeding of the rest of his cattle." It is somewhat singular that we have made the whole of these extracts from the same publication, in which we had previously found the Liebigian argument, which we have abstracted, put forward as conclusive. Year by year prizes have been offered

to agricultural machine makers for the best apparatus for preparing warm and cooked food for cattle. Many feeders have within our knowledge gone to a great expense in putting up such an apparatus. Every one of them has, we believe, discontinued its use. Nothing is so contemptible as to sneer at unsuccessful experimentalists. Truly our very best hopes for agriculture are founded on the entire explosion of the spirit which used to prevail at our farmers' market-tables in this respect. The reasonable experimentalist is now looked up to as a general benefactor. The patriotism of those who, having the means, make promising experiments, either in agriculture or in anything else, without a view to their own personal advantage, takes a very rational line. Every one knows and regrets that many discoveries, made by ingenious men in the spirited prosecution of commercial enterprise, though they have proved to be of great national advantage, have failed to realize a profit to the inventors, and have in some unfortunate cases resulted in their ruin. We are inclined to believe that the experiment of giving warm and cooked food to cattle has failed.

We have already adverted to the very ambiguous sounds emitted by the oracles when consulted on the subject of the lodging of cattle. Our own experience, in a moderately-sheltered situation, is, that beasts do best in open sheds well flanked, but open to the S. or S. E. The Norfolk man is prodigal of his straw, and his beasts come out beautifully clean. The Midland and Western man is perforce more economical, and the same cleanliness is hardly to be attained. We know an instance in which cows lie habitually without litter, and are decently clean. Their hind legs stand on a strong flag (the produce of the district, probably of the farm), and behind them is a flagged trench fourteen inches wide and three deep. In twelve years no injury has occurred to the cattle from this trench. At regular intervals holes of an inch diameter are drilled through the flag in the bottom of the trench,