me-made article is the best. On the Continent the oil-seeds are
subjected to the action of heat in order to obtain from them a greater
yield of oil. Their cakes, therefore, contain less oil, and their
flesh-forming principles are less soluble, in comparison with British
linseed-cake. Next to our home-made oil-cakes, the American is the
best. Indeed, I have met with some American cakes which were equal to
the best English.

_Rape Cake._--The use of rape-cake was limited almost completely to the
fertilising of the soil until the late Mr. Pusey, in a paper published
in the tenth volume of the _Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of
England_, advocated its employment as a substitute for the more costly
linseed-cake. The recommendation of this distinguished agriculturist
has not been disregarded; and since his time the use of this cake as a
feeding stuff has been steadily on the increase, and at the present time
its annual consumption is not far short of 50,000 tons.

In relation to the nutritive value of rape-cake there exists considerable
diversity of opinion. Certain feeders assert that animals fed upon it go
out of condition; others, whilst admitting that stock thrive upon it,
maintain the economic superiority of linseed-cake; whilst a third
set believe rape-cake to be the most economical of feeding-stuffs.
How are we to account for these great differences of opinion--not
amongst _theorists_, be it observed, but amongst practical men?
It is not difficult to explain them away satisfactorily. Rape-cake
and linseed-cake are about equally rich in muscle and fat-forming
principles; and, supposing both to be equally well-flavored, there can
be no doubt but that one is just as nourishing as the other. But it so
happens that a large proportion of the rape-cake which comes into the
British market possesses a flavor which renders it very disagreeable
to animals. One variety--namely, the East Indian--is almost poisonous,
whilst the very best kind is slightly inferior to linseed-cake. Now, if
an experiment with a very inferior kind of rape-cake and a good variety
of linseed-cake were tried, who can doubt but that the results would be
very unfavorable to the former article? Mr. Callan,[36] of Rathfarnham,
county Dublin; Mr. Bird,[37] of Renton Barns, and some other feeders,
who found rape-cake to be worse than useless, experimented, in all
probability, with an adulterated article, for they do not appear to
have had the cake an