Experience had long taught the Scotch that oats, such as they grow in
their climate, are a most nutritious food; but the habits of the more
influential English, and the ridicule of a prejudiced lexicographer,
were beginning to make them ashamed of their national diet. Chemistry
has here stepped in, and by her analysis of both, has proved not only
that the oat is richer in muscle-forming matter than the grain of
wheat, but that oatmeal is in all respects a better form of nourishment
than the finest wheaten flour. But what is more, chemistry has brought
us acquainted with the value of parts of the grain formerly considered
almost as waste. The husk or bran of wheat, for example, though given
at times to pigs, to millers' horses, and other cattle, was usually
thought to possess but little nutritive virtue in itself. Analysis,
however, has shown it to be actually richer in muscular matter than
the white interior of the grain. Thus the cause of its answering so
well as food for cattle is explained; and it is shown that its use in
bread (whole-meal bread) must be no less nutritive than economical.
The true value of other kinds of food is also established by these
inquiries. Cabbage is a crop which, up to the present time, has not
been a general favourite in this country, either in the stall or for
the table, except during early spring and summer. In North Germany
and Scandinavia, however, it appears to have been long esteemed, and
various modes of storing it for winter use have been very generally
practised. But the cabbage is one of the plants which has been
chemically examined, in consequence of the failure of the potato,
with the view of introducing it into general use, and the result of
the examination is both interesting and unexpected. When dried so as
to bring it into a state in which it can be compared with our other
kinds of food (wheat, oats, beans, &c.), it is found to be _richer in
muscular matter than any other crop we grow_. Wheat contains only about
12 per cent., and beans 25 per cent.; but dried cabbage contains from
30 to 40 per cent. of the so-called protein compounds. According to
our present views, therefore, it is pre-eminently nourishing. Hence
if it can but be made generally agreeable to the palate, and easy
of digestion, it is likely to prove the best and easiest cultivated
substitute for the potato; and no doubt the Irish kolcannon (cabbage
and potatoes beat together) derives part of its reputation from the
great muscle-sustaining power of the cabbage--a property in which the
potato is most deficient. Further, it is of interest--of national
importance, we may say--that an acre of ordinary land will, according
to the above result, produce a greater weight of this special kind
of nourishment in the form of cabbage than in the form of any other
crop. Thus twenty tons of cabbage--and good land will produce, in good
hands, forty tons of drum-head cabbage on an imperial acre--contain
fifteen hundred pounds of muscular matter; while twenty-five bushels
of beans contain only four hundred pounds; as many of wheat only two
hundred, twelve tons of potatoes only five hundred and fifty, and even
thirty tons of turnips only a thousand pounds. The preference which
some farmers have long given to this crop, as food for their stock and
their milk-cows, is accounted for by these facts; while of course they
powerfully recommend its more general cultivation as food for man.
Again:--In many parts of our island furze or gorse grows up an unheeded
weed, and luxuriates in favourable spots without being applied to any
useful purpose. In other districts, however, it is already an object of
valuable though easy culture, and large breadths of it are grown for
the feeding of stock, and yield profitable returns. Chemical researches
show its nutritive property to be very great. Of muscle-building
materials it contains, when dry, as much as 30 per cent., and is
therefore in this respect superior to beans, and inferior only to
the cabbage. Under these circumstances we can no longer doubt the
conclusions at which some experimental feeders had previously arrived,
nor the advantage which might be obtained from the more extensive
cultivation of gorse on many poor and hitherto almost neglected
soils.--_Edinburgh Review._