The subject of our first Plate is a Sow and Litter, bred by and the property of S. Wiley, Esq., of Brandsby, Yorkshire, which obtained the first prize at the meeting of the Yorkshire Agricultural Society, held at Richmond, as the best sow of the small breed. She is now in the possession of Mr. Macintosh, of Marshalls, near Romford, Essex. The young pigs represented in the engraving have been sold to various influential parties, Earl Fitzwilliam and Lord Feversham having purchased one each. This sow's offspring of a previous litter obtained prizes at the meetings of the Yorkshire Agricultural Society at Doncaster, the Liverpool Agricultural Society, and the Beverley Agricultural Society. A boar of her produce is now in use at the "Home Farm," Windsor Park. Mr. Wiley's breed of pigs has been long known and esteemed in the county of York.

COSSACK; WINNER OF THE DERBY, 1847.

ENGRAVED BY E. HACKER, FROM A PAINTING BY HARRY HALL, OF NEWMARKET.

Cossack, bred by Mr. R. C. Elwes, of Billing, Northampton, in 1844, was got by Hetman Platoff, out of Joannina, by Priam, her dam Joanna, by Sultan, out of Fillagree, by Soothsayer -Web, by Waxy-Penelope.

Hetman Platoff, bred by Mr. Bowes in 1836, is by Brutandorf, dam by Comus, out of Marciana by Stamford. As a winner the Hetman was well known as the best horse of his day, while as a stallion people were actually beginning to cry out that he couldn't get a racehorse. Recent events have proved this a little premature.

Joannina, bred by her present owner Mr. Elwes, 1835, we remember as a very decent runner on the midland county circuit. She was put to the stud in 1842; threw a colt-foal, that died a few days old, the next year; missed in 1843; and trumped these disappointments with the Derby

crack in 1844.

Cossack is a chesnut horse, standing fifteen hands two inches high, with a neat blood-like head, very clean neck and shoulders well drawn back, round body with very large ribs, good back, and very muscular quarters, a little droping towards the tail; capital thighs and arms, sharp from the hocks and knees to the ground, not very large bone but very wiry; clean, sound legs and feet. He has no white beyond a few grey hairs in the forehead.

SUMMARY OF COSSACK'S PERFORMANCES.

In 1846 he ran once. In 1847 he has run five times, and won three :

The Newmarket Stakes-value clear
The Derby.

The Swinley Stakes

OLD SERIES.]

£

675

5,250

75 £6,000

ON THE PREPARATION OF LINSEED COMPOUND, AND OTHER ARTIFICIAL FOOD FOR STOCK.

BY G. AND H. RAYNBIRD.

A cheap and fattening compound for the purpose he is supplying his cattle with good and genuine of feeding cattle is now appreciated by every far- food. The heavy outlay for carriage will be matemer; and when we consider the immense sums rially diminished, for, independent of the saving in which are yearly expended by the farmers of Great the carriage of the cake, there will also be a saving Britain in the purchase of artificial food, it becomes in the carriage of grain to market, as all the inferior matter of great importance that a cheap material samples of barley, peas, or beans, that will comshould be substituted, in some degree, for the pro-mand but a trifling price in the market, may be duce of a foreign country in the manufacture of beef and mutton.

converted into a valuable food. There are other advantages that are likely to accrue from substiHowever, we do not advocate the use of com- tuting compound for oil-cake. But we must not pound to the disuse of oil-cake, or of any other ar- forget that the subject of our inquiry is the prepaticle; but we do advocate the use of substances-ration of compound, and not its comparative whether of home or foreign growth-which will value. produce the greatest amount of marketable produce The objections that have been made to the sysat the least expense. It must be wrong to place the chief dependence on one article; a greater demand than usual, or some other circumstance, may at any time cause a rise in the market, which at once does away with the grazier's chance of making a profit by his cattle.

tem of feeding on steamed or boiled food are―1st, The expense of erecting a suitable and efficient apparatus; 2nd, The cost of fuel and labour in the preparation of the food; 3rd, That the steaming operation cannot be trusted to the general run of labourers; 4th, It is alleged by some, and it has even been proved by experiment, that it is more profitable to fatten cattle with raw than with cooked roots. These objections, though valid in the feeding of cattle with steamed roots, have very little weight in the preparation of linseed compound. The cost of putting up iron boilers is not considerable, and any small building or end of a shed will serve the pur

Oil-cake brought from abroad has long been a staple commodity in the fattening of cattle, and it is doubtless one of the best articles for the production of fat, though inferior to some in the fleshforming property. From the great demand that has been in this country for linseed cake, the price has of late years risen so exorbitantly that it has given great encouragement to our foreign neigh-pose of a boiling house; the expense of labour and bours in a fraudulent system of adulterating the article sold to us as linseed cake. But this evil will in time work its own cure. The cultivation of linseed in this country, and the importation of seed for the purpose of being formed into compound with a mixture of the farmer's home productions, will at once prevent adulteration, and supersede the use of, or at least lower the price of, foreign cake, which is but the refuse of the seed, and cannot, at its usual price, bear comparison as to cheapness with the boiled preparation of the seed itself.

In using linseed cake the grazier has not only to pay for the article itself, but he has also to pay for its manufacture, and generally for a long and expensive carriage. On the other hand, by using compound formed of linseed with a mixture of grain, the grazier will in a great measure be converting his own productions into meat; he will be the manufacturer of his own oil-cake in the shape of compound, and consequently will be certain that

for fuel is also trifling, and the process of boiling is so simple that any one may be trusted in the performance of the work. The bulky nature of roots cause the process of steaming to be laborious, and the quantity of water contained in the roots being partly given off as steam cause the roots to lose a proportion of their weight. The addition of water in the boiling of linseed compound increases its weight more than two-fold.

One great advantage of linseed compound is that a mixture of food will turn to a better account than feeding on one description of food in addition to the roots or hay; for some kinds of food have a tendency to produce fat, other kinds muscle or flesh. It must, therefore, be advantageous to feed our cattle on mixed food, so combined that it supplies, at the least expense, all the requisites for the quick production of meat, in which the fat and lean are blended in the proper proportion to each other.

The following extracts from Professor Playfair's

"The numbers in the first column, representing the gluten, are actually the equivalent value of the various foods, as far as flesh is concerned. The second column, on the other hand, furnishes a rough approximation as to the power of the food to form tallow. Sheep fed on oil-cake increase in weight faster than on any other kind of food; but they feel quite soft, and when fat handle like a bag of oil. This is because they receive food which contains very little albumen to form flesh, so that tallow is the only product. But if with the oil-cake they receive oats or barley, they are firm to the touch, and possess plenty of good flesh, and the fat lies equally distributed amongst the muscular fibre. The reason is obvious, for both oats and barley contain much albumen."

boiling, or steaming, before using them as food, must be apparent to the grazier.

We shall now proceed to consider the apparatus employed in the preparation of the compound. In cooking food for stock, the steaming apparatus has hitherto been generally used, and is admirably adapted for roots, chaff, and other bulky material; but in the preparation of linseed, compound steaming must give place, in simplicity at least, to boiling. The advantages of boiling are, the simple nature of the operation, the small outlay required in erecting a suitable apparatus, and the facility given for mixing and stirring the compound-advantages which steam does not appear to possess to the like extent. The cost of the apparatus may in many cases be said to be nominal, as some farmers prepare their compound in places which had been erected for other purposes previous to the introduction of this system of feeding. For there is generally some kind of building on a farm fitted with a copper, which will be suitable for the preparation of the linseed compound, though it will not perhaps be perfect in its situation, or convenient in its arrangement. We should, however (particularly where the system is carried to any extent), advocate the fitting up boilers in the manner we are about to describe, or on some other equally convenient plan.

By a little contrivance one apparatus may be made to serve the double purpose of boiling and steaming. We might be making compound in our boilers, and the steam arising from the water might be employed in cooking roots or chaff. An easy way of managing this would be to have a vessel to contain the roots, with small holes in the

We have made this extract from Professor Play-bottom to admit the steam. This vessel, being fair's lecture, to show that a compound formed of made the size of the boiler, when filled with roots various substances, such as linseed, barley, with may take the place of the lid, and be so constructed beans or peas, contains the elements needful in the as to slide on and off at pleasure. Another plan production of meat of good quality, and in a short of constructing a steamer of a common boiler is to time. The oil and mucilage contained in the have a false bottom, either of wood or iron, perlinseed forms tallow or fat; the barley contains a forated with small holes, this being made to fit into fair proportion of the substances necessary for the the boiler at a certain distance from the bottom: production of both fat and flesh; and the peas or water is poured in as far as the partition, and the beans contain a large proportion of gluten or al-boiler is then filled with the roots or other subbumen for the formation of muscle or flesh. stance intended to be steamed, and the fire is now Professor Playfair also says :-" If the food be in a lighted. If the lid is moderately tight, so as to state in which it is difficult to masticate, much of prevent the steam escaping as fast as it arises, this it will be lost in the production of force necessary will be a cheap and serviceable way of steaming on to adapt it for the organs of digestion." The ad- a small scale. These suggestions are merely given vantage, therefore, of reducing such hard substances to show the easy manner in which boiling and as linseed, barley, peas and beans, by grinding, steaming may be combined.

A

THE PLAN

As the corn and linseed requires to be crushed Is a lean-to building adjoining the bullock-shed. before it is made into compound, it has been sug

5

3

2

4

6

-B

gested that the mills for that purpose ought to be placed in a room directly above the boiling-house, so that the crushed corn can be thrown through a hole in the floor, directly into the boilers. This appears to be a suitable arrangement, though it is perhaps only applicable when the crushing is done by manual labour, or where a steam-engine is used to perform a number of operations, such as threshing, cutting chaff, crushing corn, and steaming. In the arrangement we have adopted, the mills are placed over the chaff-machine, and are so contrived that they may be worked at the same time, and also be driven by the same driving power as the chaff machine. There is some extra labour in removing the corn, which would not be required if the mill was placed immediately over the boiler. However, this is a secondary consideration; and every compartment of a farmer, cannot be brought into such close contact as to economize labour in every particular.

The mills we use are Parson and Clyburn's V mill, for crushing beans and peas; this it does remarkably well, not grinding to powder, but merely breaking. This mill is much better adapted for pulse than

1-Two iron boilers, holding 100 gallons each. for grain or linseed. We find a mill made by Har

2-Flue.

aa-Boilers. bb-Furnaces: these are merely constructed of the old tires of wheels, and are suitable for burning large logs of wood. cc-Flue.

wood and Turner, of Ipswich, to be superior for the latter purpose: the steel rollers of this mill are much to be preferred for crushing linseed to the stones of the flour mills, as the seed does not clog the rollers. Though grain cannot be ground to powder by these mills, yet they are a very great saving on the usual practice of sending grain to be ground by the mills, whose charge is about 2s. 6d. per quarter. Oats may be ground as well by a steel mill, and linseed much better than it can be done by the miller.

Some time previous to our adoption of the system of compound feeding, we had been feeding bullocks and sheep on crushed grain, linseed, and oilcake, and found it to answer; though now we give the preference to boiling.

RECIPES FOR THE PREPARATION OF LINSEED
COMPOUND.

No. 1.-BARLEY AND LINSEED.-A 100-gallon copper, full of compound, is prepared as follows:Two-and-a-half bushels of crushed linseed is gradually stirred into 60 gallons of boiling water: this is dissolved in about ten minutes, and 8 bushels of crushed barley is added gradually, and the mixture well stirred up. The fire is now put out, and

*If this plan is not sufficiently explicit, the writers will be glad to furnish plans and estimates of the cost of putting up a similar apparatus.