Whatever difference of opinion there may be with regard to the propriety of cooking the food of stock, we believe there ought not to be a doubt as to the desirability of mechanically treating the harder kinds of feeding stuff. It is quite evident that a horse fed upon hard grains of oats and wiry fibres of uncut hay or straw must expend no inconsiderable proportion of his motive power in the process of mastication. After a hard day's work of eight or ten hours he has before him the laborious task of reducing to a pulp from 12 lbs. to 20 lbs. weight of exceedingly hard and tough vegetable matter; and as this operation is carried on during the hours which should be devoted to rest, the repose of the animal is to some extent interfered with. Indeed, it not unfrequently happens that a horse, after a hard day's work, is too tired to chew his food properly; he consequently bolts his oats, a large proportion of which, as a matter of course, passes unchanged through the animal's body. In order to render fully effective the motive power of the horse, it is absolutely necessary to pay attention to the condition, as well as to the quantity and quality of his nutriment. The force wasted by a horse in the comminution of his food, when composed of whole oats and uncut hay and straw, cannot, at the lowest estimate, be less than that which he expends in an hour of ordinary work, such as, for example, in ploughing. The preparation of his food by means of water or steam power, or even by animal motive power, would economise by at least 50 per cent. the labor expended in its mastication; and this would be equivalent to nearly half a day's work in each week, and, consequently, a clear gain of so much labor to the owner of the animal. In the present time of water-power and steam-power corn-mills, one man is able to grind the flour necessary for the support of several thousand men; in early ages the labor of one person in the grinding of wheat served but to supply the wants of twenty others. In both cases machinery was employed for reducing the grain to flour; but in the one case, the mechanisms employed were more than a hundred times more effective than in the other. But even the most imperfect flour mill is by far a more economical system of comminuting corn than the jaws of animals; and if every man were obliged, as the horse is, to grind his corn by means of his teeth alone, he would find his powers for the performance of other kinds of labor considerably lessened. It has been urged as an objection to the use of bruised oats by horses, that they exercise in that state a laxative influence upon the animal's bowels. I doubt very much that such is frequently the case, when the animal is fed only upon oats and hay and straw; but even if the oats produce such an effect, the addition of a small proportion of beans--the binding properties of which are well known--will obviate the disadvantage.