_Beans_ are used as fattening food for cattle, for which purpose they should be ground into meal, as otherwise a large proportion of their substance would pass through the animal's body unchanged. It is not good economy to give a fattening bullock more than 3 or 4 lbs. weight per diem; a larger proportion is apt to induce constipation. The very small proportion of ready-formed fat, the moderate amount of starch, and the exceedingly high per-centage of flesh-formers which beans contain, prove that they are better adapted as food for beasts of burthen than for the fattening of stock. Oats, Indian corn, or oil-cake, will be found to produce a greater increase of meat than equal money's worth of beans or peas, and I would therefore recommend the restriction of leguminous seeds, under ordinary circumstances, to horses and bulls. It has been stated, on good authority, that when oats are given whole to horses, a large proportion passes unchanged through the animal's body, but that on the addition of beans, the oats are thoroughly digested. COMPOSITION OF LEGUMINOUS SEEDS. --------------------+-------+-------+-------+--------+---------- | Common|Foreign| Peas.|Lentils.| Winter | Beans.| Beans.| | | Tares | | | | |(foreign). --------------------+-------+-------+-------+--------+---------- Water | 13·0 | 14·5 | 14·0 | 13·0 | 15·5 Flesh-formers | 25·5 | 23·0 | 23·5 | 24·0 | 26·5 Fat-formers | 48·5 | 48·7 | 50·0 | 50·5 | 47·5 Woody fibre | 10·0 | 10·0 | 10·0 | 10·0 | 9·0 Mineral matter | 3·0 | 3·8 | 2·5 | 2·5 | 1·5 --------------------+-------+-------+-------+--------+---------- | 100·0 | 100·0 | 100·0 | 100·0 | 100·0 --------------------+-------+-------+-------+--------+---------- _Oil Seeds._--The seeds of a great variety of plants, such as the flax, hemp, rape, mustard, cotton, and sunflower, are exceedingly rich in oil, some of them containing nearly half their weight of that substance. Of these oil-seeds there are many which might with advantage be employed as fattening, food, although one only--linseed--has come into general use for that purpose. _Rape-seeds_ closely resemble linseeds in composition, but they are considerably cheaper. They contain an acrid substance, but the large proportion of oil with which it is associated almost completely disguises its unpleasant flavor.