Goodrich to think my farm is so very acre, located within half a mile of the poor. I bought a farm about thirty station.. It is because the farmers years ago and raised my first crop there have been robbing the soil of its with seven bushels of wheat and ten fertility. I was down in the state of bushels of oats to the acre. I kept New Jersey at the meeting of the that farm for twenty years and before State Board of Agriculture, and they I sold it the enumerator of that town told me that the little state of New told me I had the best crops and Jersey paid $3,000,000.00 a year for raised the most on the land I owned commercial fertilizers, and you can of any man in the town, so I have buy land within sixty miles of New had some experience in renovating. York city or Philadelphia that was But if there is anything to help this once good land for $40.00 an acre. So, wornout land, I want to know it. because they have robbed their soil of its fertility, they are relying upon commercial fertilizers and nothing else to grow a crop, and they set up the howl: "It is so dry," when the statistics show that the average rainfall for the last twenty years was just as much as for twenty years before. They won't believe it. Mr. Goodrich-Professor Henry has answered that. Question-Do you advise applying manure in the winter time to steep hillsides? Mr. Goodrich-My practice on my own farm, some of which is hilly and some level, was to haul it onto the level land and then, later, after the ground was beginning to thaw out, 1 put some on the hills, but ordinarily I do not think there is much fertility washed down the hillsides. There are certain times when the ground is covered with ice and a thaw comes and heavy rains when it will wash. I like to apply it on the grass land and the grass and stubble help to hold it. There is one other thing. Professor Henry wants to encourage the Wisconsin farmers. That is right. In my hurry I neglected to say that I be lieved that Wisconsin farmers are doing very much better than they are in the east. I have traveled over the state of Michigan two winters in the Farmers' Institute work, and I can buy land, just as good as the farming lands between here and Watertown (as they were once), for $40.00 an 11 Mr. Convey-I would like to ask, Mr. Goodrich, would you recommend a young man to go east and grow up with the country? Mr. Goodrich-I advise him to stay in Wisconsin. Supt. McKerrow-According to Mr. Goodrich, the young man better go up north and grow up with the country. The Chairman-I hope every farmer in this audience will be eager to get the report of this meeting and read what has been said on this subject; that we may be enabled, by a proper rotation of crops, to bring up the fertility of our farms so that they may be for the next hundred years inde pendent of commercial fertilizers. Let us see to it that our farms are more and more fertile year after year, and leave that splendid inheritance to our children and the next generation. -DAIRY PRODUCTS COMPARED WITH OTHER FOOD MATERIALS. CHAS. D. WOODS, Director Maine Agricultural Experiment Station. The farmer should be well nour of the body we will call its tissues, of ished. He grows a considerable part [which the chief is flesh, meaning by of his own food, and can with little this, lean flesh, muscle, tendon and soexpenditure of labor and money have called animal matter of bone and the an healthful variety. The farmers of like. In the growing body they are this state, and, indeed of this Nation, being built up and in both the adult have all they need to eat, and in gen- and the child they are being coneral more than they need, but un- stantly worn out and repaired. fortunately their selection of food is The materials in the food which not nearly as good as it might be. build up the body and repair This will be more readily understood after we see how it is that the food nourishes the body; how much nutriment there is in the different food materials; what are the different kinds of nutritive ingredients or nutrients the food materials contain; what are the demands of the body and what kinds and amounts of food materials cal analysis shows us very clearly will best meet these demands. This means a lesson in physiological chemistry, a lesson which begins with the rudiments of the science of nutrition. These rudiments have to do with protein, fats and carbohydrates, with flesh formers, fuel values. dietary standards and the like. When these are put together, we shall be talking of the different food materials as meat and potatoes, and bread and milk, of properly balanced diet, of combinations of food to meet the demands of different people of different ages, sex, and occupation. Flesh Formers-Protein. For breakfast this morning we had beef steak and potatoes. With these were bread and butter and one or two cups of coffee with some sugar in it. Now this food has its use, namely, to build and repair the bodily machine and keep it running. The bodily machine is made of blood and muscle and bone and brain. The frame work its waste we will here call flesh formers, although more common names in scientific treatises are protein, pro teids or albuminoids. Now we can live on bread, meat,, milk and a great many other materials. These must therefore contain the flesh forming substances. Chemi what those flesh forming substances are, and how much of them there is in a pound or a quart of milk. Today we have tables of the composition of food materials which show the percent. ages of flesh formers in all of our ordinary food materials. But what are the flesh forming substances in food? One kind is found in the lean part of meat and makes the basis of muscle. Chemists call this substance myosin. If we take the white of eggs and dry out the water. the residue, which is called albumen, is a flesh forming substance. If we put rennet in milk and separate out the curd from water, sugar and fat. the residue consists mainly of a flesh forming substance which is known as casein. Make wheat flour into dough, knead it for a long while with water and then remove the starch and sugar and there will remain the gluten with a little oil and some other substances. This gluten is the flesh forming substance of wheat. Compounds similar to gluten occur in rye and barley and steak we had for breakfast contained corn and rice and potatoes, and in our flesh forming substances, but it also vegetable foods generally. If these had more or less fat. The bread materials did not contain flesh form- contained some gluten, but it had also ers, they would have very little value starch and a little oil. The butter by themselves alone for food. We which we put on the bread is a fatty could not live upon them unless we substance. The sugar with which we used with them some other substance sweetened our coffee was a substance to supply flesh formers. Certain allied to starch. classes of people, including many The fats and oils, the sugars and tribes of negroes in Africa, and in- starches are burned in our bodies just deed a large number of the negroes as truly as coal and wood are burned and the poor whites in our own south- under the boiler of the engine. The ern states, subsist upon a diet which men who deal in abstract science tell contains very little of the flesh form- us that all of these substances contain ers. They live on a low nutritive energy; potential energy it is called. plane. One thing that is needed for When the coal is burned in the furtheir elevation is a better balanced nace or the food is burned in the body diet. their potential energy is changed into other forms called heat and mechanical power. When the coal is burned in the furnace, its potential energy is transformed into heat, and part of that is changed into the expansive power of steam which moves the engine, draws the railway train and keps the wheels of the factory in motion. When the fuel is burned in the body, its potential energy is transformed into the animal heat which keeps the body warm, and into muscular power with which muscular work is done. The fats of meat, the fat of milk, which makes butter, the oil which is abundant in the olive and in the cotton seed, and which occurs in smaller proportions in wheat and corn and particularly in nearly all of our food materials, are fuel ingredients of food. The starch which makes up the bulk of the nutritive material of wheat and rice and corn and potatoes, Fuel Ingredients of Food-Fats and and the sugars, of which there is a Chemists have devoted a great deal of study to these flesh forming substances, and find that they all contain a certain list of chemical elements which we call nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and sulphur. The characteristic element of them all is nitrogen. They are nitrogenous substances. In the laboratory we call them all protein compounds. Be cause of the similarity of many of them to the albumen of egg, they are sometimes called albuminoids. Another name which is frequently given to them is proteids; a more common one is protein, but for our present purpose we will simply call them flesh formers. They are the materials which build up the frame work of the body and repair its wastes. From them muscle and sinew, blood and bone are formed. Carbohydrates. little in wheat, considerable in milk and a large amount in the sugar cane and sugar beet, are, likewise, fuel ingredients. Chemists group sugars and starches together and call them carbohydrates. It is one thing to build a machine and keep it in repair. It is another thing to keep it running. For this it must have power. A steam engine gets its power from its fuel, coal or wood, as the case may be. The bodi- The carbohydrates and the fats or ly machine derives its power from the oils are the chief fuel ingredients of fuel ingredients of its food. The the food. They all consist of three chief fuel ingredients are fats and chemical elements, carbon, hydrogen oils, starches and sugars. The beef and oxygen. The chief of these is carbon, and hence the fats and car- ing the fuel value of different subbohydrates are called carbonaceous stances, advantage is taken of the food materials. The carbonaceous fact that it requires a definite amount food ingredients then are the ones of heat to raise a pound of water one that serve for fuel while the nitrog- degree. The heat unit used in these enous ingredients are the flesh form- measurements is very nearly the ers. This is not the whole of the amount of heat necessary to raise one story; indeed, it is only a small part pound of water four degrees Fahrenof it, but it is the most essential heit. This unit of fuel value is called part. The flesh formers can also the calorie. Instead of a heat unit serve as fuel. A dog can live on lean we might use a unit of mechanical meat and get from it what is needed, power, as a foot ton, which is the not only to build his body and keep it power that would raise a ton one foot. in repair, but can also burn it and One calorie equals 1.52 foot tons utilize its potential energy. For that nearly. In other words the heat matter we do the same thing with all which would raise the temperature of the flesh formers of food. When we one pound of water four degrees get through with them for building Fahrenheit would, if transformed into material, and, indeed, without using mechanical power, suffice to lift 1.52 them for building material, we burn tons one foot. The fuel value of a them in the body, and they supply us pound of starch or sugar (carbohywith heat and strengtth. In other drates) is very nearly one thousand words, the flesh formers can ful- eight hundred and sixty calories. The fill the two great purposes of fuel value of a pound of fat is about nutrition, the building of tissue four thousand two hundred and and the yielding of energy. But the fats and the carbohydrates cannot build tissue. The carbohydrates can be changed to fats in the body and can with the fats be stored in the body in the fatty tissues, i. e., the tissues which hold fat, but the fat is stored there for fuel. It is the reserve fuel which the body keeps for its needs. From this fact, namely, that the flesh formers can also serve serve as fuel. as fuel, but the fats and carbohydrates, or fuel ingredients, cannot serve as building material, there is one very important inference. We need, and for proper nutrition, must have large enough proportion of flesh formers in our food. Fuel Values of Food. a The values of the different food materials and of their several ingredients for serving the body as fuel may be measured by their ability to furnish heat when burned. Their fuel value is readily learned by burning the materials in an apparatus called a calorimeter and measuring the heat produced. In this process of measur twenty calories, or two and one-fourth Usually foods contain both flesh the fuel ingredients and contain rel- dinary meats, for instance, is pracatively large quantities of the flesh tically all digested when it is eaten formers. A marked exception to this in moderate quantities by healthy peroccurs in the legumes or pulse family sons, but the same persons might diof plants. The common members of gest only nine-tenths of the protein this family contain relatively large of wheat flour made into bread and quantities of the flesh formers. not more than three-fourths of that of Familiar illustrations are found in potatoes. The fat of meats is less such valuable foods as peas, beans, completely digested. The sugar and peanuts, lentils, etc., some of which starch of vegetable foods, properly are spoken of in detail beyond. Seeds, cocked, is very easily digested. including nuts, usually contain rela Different the Body. tively more of the flesh formers than The Fitting of Foods to the Needs of do the other parts of plants. The vegetable oils are also most abundant people have different in seeds. needs for nutriment. All are alike The animal foods generally contain in that they must have protein for relatively large amounts of flesh the building and repair of the bodily formers. The fuel constituents of machine, and fuel ingredients for animal foods are chiefly fats. With warmth and work. But they differ the exception of milk, animal foods widely in the amounts and proporcontain almost none of the carbohy- tions they require, and even among drates. The large amount of flesh those in gcod health, there are many formers (protein) which the animal who are obliged to avoid certain kinds foods contain admirably adapts them of food, while invalids and people for the construction and maintenance with weak digestion must often have of the body. The energy needed to special diet. maintain the temperature of the body and yield muscular power might possibly be furnished by the flesh formers themselves, but it is much better furnished by the non-nitrogenous materials. The fat (fuel constituents) of animal foods may be so combined with the proteín (flesh formers) as to meet the requirements of the body without waste, but vegetable foods are especially adapted to supply the food needed for fuel. For people in good health and with good digestion, there are two important rules to be observed in the regulation of the diet. The first is to choose the things which "agree" with them, and to avoid those which they cannot digest and assimilate without harm. The second is to use such kinds and amounts of food as will supply all the nutrients the body needs, and at the same time avoid burdening it with superfluous material to be disposed of at the cost of health and strength. Some of the very fat meats, as fat pork, contain little else than fat, and hence have little or no value as flesh For guidance in this selection, naformers, but serve as very concen- ture provides us with instinct, taste trated fuel. Fat pork, butter, lard and experience. Physiological chemsuet and oils, such as olive and cotton istry adds to these the knowledgeseed oils, have the highest fuel value still new and far from adequate-of of all the more common food ma- the composition of food, and the laws terials. Digestibility of Food. of nutrition. In our actual practice of eating, we are apt to be influenced too much by taste, that is, by the dicIn general, the animal foods are tates of the palate; we are prone to somewhat more digestible than the let natural instinct be overruled by vegetable foods. The protein of or- acquired appetite; and we neglect the |