n the above diet to my
utmost satisfaction; and even during the present dry and warm
weather they evince no lingering after roots or grass. I am well
aware that the use of treacle for neat stock is no new discovery
of my own, as I learnt the system while on a visit to a friend
in Norfolk, where some graziers have used it in combination with
roots during many years past. Perhaps flax-seed (linseed) boiled
into a jelly and used in a similar way, may be a more profitable
"substitute for roots" than treacle; but the preparation of it is
attended with more expense and trouble.

SECTION VIII.

CONDIMENTAL FOOD.

Although every farmer may not have used, there are few who have not
heard of "Thorley's Condimental Food for Cattle." This nostrum is a
compound of some of the ordinary foods with certain well-known aromatic
and carminative substances. It possesses a very agreeable flavor, and it
is therefore much relished by horses, and indeed by every kind of stock.
The price of this compound was at first so much as L60 per ton; but
owing to competition, and perhaps to the attacks made upon the
enormously high price of this article, it is now to be obtained at
prices varying from L12 to L24 per ton.

The inventor of condimental food, and the numerous fabricators of that
compound, claim for it merits of no ordinary nature. Its use, they
assert, not only maintains the animals fed upon it in excellent health,
but it also exercises so remarkable an action upon the adipose tissues
that fat accumulates to an immense extent. Moreover, it is said that an
animal supplied with a very moderate daily modicum of this wonderful
compound, will consume less of its ordinary food, though rapidly
becoming fat.

Now, if these assertions were perfectly, or even approximatively,
true, Mr. Thorley would be well deserving of a niche in the temple of
fame, and stock-feeders would ever regard him as a benefactor to his
own and the bovine species; but I fear that Mr. Thorley's imagination
outstripped his reason when he described in such glowing terms the
wonderful virtues of his tonic food.

Mr. J. B. Lawes, of Rothamstead, than whom there is no more accurate
experimenter in agricultural practice, states that he made many careful
trials with Thorley's food, and that he never found it to exercise
the slightest influence upon the nutrition of the animals fed upon it.
In his report upon this subject, Mr. Lawes, afte