attract a fair amount of attention; and
no doubt ere long the best modes of treating the food of cattle will be
discovered.

As might be expected from our limited experience of the subject, there
exists considerable difference of opinion relative to the proper method
of cooking cattle food; and there are many very extensive feeders who
object to the plan altogether, and contend that as the food of the
inferior animals is naturally supplied to them in a raw condition,
it would be quite unnatural to give it to them in a cooked state.

Whatever difference of opinion there may be with regard to the propriety
of cooking the food of stock, we believe there ought not to be a doubt
as to the desirability of mechanically treating the harder kinds of
feeding stuff. It is quite evident that a horse fed upon hard grains of
oats and wiry fibres of uncut hay or straw must expend no inconsiderable
proportion of his motive power in the process of mastication. After a
hard day's work of eight or ten hours he has before him the laborious
task of reducing to a pulp from 12 lbs. to 20 lbs. weight of exceedingly
hard and tough vegetable matter; and as this operation is carried on
during the hours which should be devoted to rest, the repose of the
animal is to some extent interfered with. Indeed, it not unfrequently
happens that a horse, after a hard day's work, is too tired to chew his
food properly; he consequently bolts his oats, a large proportion of
which, as a matter of course, passes unchanged through the animal's
body.

In order to render fully effective the motive power of the horse, it is
absolutely necessary to pay attention to the condition, as well as to
the quantity and quality of his nutriment. The force wasted by a horse
in the comminution of his food, when composed of whole oats and uncut
hay and straw, cannot, at the lowest estimate, be less than that which
he expends in an hour of ordinary work, such as, for example, in
ploughing. The preparation of his food by means of water or steam power,
or even by animal motive power, would economise by at least 50 per cent.
the labor expended in its mastication; and this would be equivalent to
nearly half a day's work in each week, and, consequently, a clear gain
of so much labor to the owner of the animal. In the present time of
water-power and steam-power corn-mills, one man is able to grind the
flour necessary for the support of several thousand men; in early ages
the labor of