Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/371

Rh contain too little nitrogen, and it has been found necessary to supplement them with other more highly nitrogenous foods. This need has served to utilize a number of by-products, as gluten, linseed, and cotton-seed meals, whose value is becoming more and more widely recognized. It has been one of the chief aims of our experiment stations, in extending the scientific principles of feeding, to develop the rational use of these foods, while numbers of farmers with their aid have largely increased their annual products.

One of the great problems which met our agricultural scientists was to arrange some way in which milk could be equitably bought and sold. As the amount of fat in pure milk may vary anywhere from less than three to over eight per cent, it is evident that the value of milk for butter-making must depend upon the amount of butter-fat that it contains. Any chemist can tell us this, but dairies and creameries can not afford to keep their chemists; so it became important to discover some method by which the amount of fat in milk could be quickly and accurately ascertained. For a number of years the attempt proved a failure, for the methods proposed were misleading. As the improved breeds of cattle became more prominent, it became more evident that great unfairness was done in paying a definite price per quart for milk without reference to its quality, and renewed and successful efforts were made by the various experiment stations to obtain some accurate chemical method which could be operated by any dairyman of ordinary intelligence. As a result of the effort, several good methods have been published within the last two years, and one or another of them has come into quite extended use. With the recent greatly increased supply of dairy products came the invariable reduction of prices, and the margin for gain has become so small that only the best cattle can be kept with profit. This fact makes the methods for the determination of the fat contents of milk unusually important, for by their use dairymen can weed out their poorer animals and by careful selection greatly enhance the value of their herds.

The improvements in the methods of extracting sugar from cane in Louisiana; the introduction of the process of "Pasteurization" of wines in California, which does away with the use of antiseptics of any kind; and many other useful results, either wholly or partly due to the experiment stations, might be detailed to advantage. None of them, however, compare with the great improvement among the American farmers themselves. The bulletins of the stations have done and are doing a good work. New facts, new theories, and new interests are daily added to the farmers' lives. A great school is open to them, of whatever age or sex, and they are learning. They are studying science upon their