Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: -We have now to refer to the more exact, but shorter experiments of scientific men. Those of Boussingault, on his farm at Bechelbronn, in one case lasted over eight successive weeks, and in another over four successive weeks, with the following results :—The foods given are named in the first column, the daily ration of the several foods being calculated according to a recognised table of equivalents, as equal in every case to 33 Ibs. of hay. Food given during successive weeks.Quantity of Milk daily.Percentage composition of Milk. Casein. Butter.Sugar.Ash.Water.Fikst Series. pinti. Hay ....9-33-44-5470'l877Turnips and straw10-53-04-25-00-287-6Wurzel and straw9-83-44-05'30-287-1Raw potatoes and straw873-44-05-90-286-5Hay .6'2—————Raw potatoes, salt, and straw . . . .5-9— ————Jerusalem artichokes6-03-33-55-50-287-5Second Series. Hay and clover18-63-03-54'50-288-8Green clover21-23-15-64'20-386-8It seems plain that the results of the first series, as indicated by the diminished yield of the cow on hay, were vitiated by the general diminished productiveness of the animal with the lapse of time. Another elaborate series of experiments on this subject was published by Dr. E. D. Thomson, who many years ago compared the effect of barley, malt, barley and molasses, barley and linseed, and bean-meal, in their effects on the quantity and quality of the milk yielded by two cows on these diets respectively, during successive periods, generally of 10 or 15 days. The following results are condensedfrom the tables in which he gives a summary of his observations:— Duration of Experiment.Daily Food consumed.Daily Milk.Yield of Butter per Cow.Days.Lbs.Lfcs.Oi.15j Barley . - . . 10 ) ) Hay ... 29£ (8H10115j Malt ... 10| ) JHay . . . 27J 120i"1 ( Barley . . 91 10( .Molasses ......