These analytical results have been supported by practical feeding experiments in America and Germany (see full account in Zipperer's book, _The Manufacture of Chocolate_). Prof. Faelli, in Turin, obtained, by giving cacao shell to cows, an increase in both the quantity and quality of the milk. More recent experience seems to indicate that it is unwise to put a very high percentage of cacao shell in a cattle food; in small quantities in compound feeding cakes, etc., as an appetiser it has been used for years with good results. (Further particulars will be found in _Cacao Shells as Fodder_, by A.W. Knapp, _Tropical Life_, 1916, p. 154, and in _The Separation and Uses of Cacao Shell_, Society of Chemical Industry's Journal, 1918, 240). The price of shell has shown great variation. The following figures are for the grade of shell which is almost entirely free from cocoa: CACAO SHELL. AVERAGE PRICE PER TON. Year 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 Price 65/- 70/- 70/- 70/- 90/- 128/- 284/- 161/- PRICE PER FOOD UNIT. _July_, 1915. _Jan._, 1919. _s._ _d._ _s._ _d._ English Oats 3 1-1/2 3 8 Cotton Seed Cake 2 5 3 11 Linseed Cake 1 7 3 5 Brewers Grains (dried) 1 6-1/2 3 8-1/2 Decorticated Cotton Cake 1 6 3 3-1/2 Cacao Shell 8-1/4 1 4-1/2 The above table speaks for itself; the figures are from the Journal of the Board of Agriculture; I have added cacao shell for comparison. CHAPTER VIII THE COMPOSITION AND FOOD VALUE OF COCOA AND CHOCOLATE Before the Spaniards made themselves Masters of Mexico, no other drink was esteem'd but that of cocoa; none caring for wine, notwithstanding the soil produces vines everywhere in great abundance of itself. John Ogilvy's _America_, 1671. The early writers on chocolate generally became lyrical when they wrote of its value as a food. Thus in the _Natural History of Chocolate_, by R. Brookes (1730), we read that an ounce of chocolate contains as much nourishment as a pound of beef, that a woman and a child, and even a councillor, lived on chocolate alone for a long period, and further: "Before chocolate was known in Europe, good old wine was called the milk of old men; but this title is now applied with greater reason to chocolate, since its use has become so common, that it has been perceived that chocolate is, with respect to them, what milk is to infants." A more temperate tone is shown in the following, from _A Curious Treatise of the Nature and Quality of Chocolate_, by Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma, a Spaniard, Physician and Chyrurgion of the city of Ecija, in Andaluzia (printed at the Green Dragon, 1685):