ORIGINAL ARTICLES.

    SOME DIGESTIBILITY TRIALS ON INDIAN FEEDING
                         STUFFS, PART VII.
                    KANGRA RICE STRAW.

                                               BY

             P. E. LANDER, M.A., D.Sc., A.I.C., I.A.S.,

           Agricultural Chemist to Government, Punjab,

                                           AND

        PANDIT LAL CHAND DHARMANI, L.AG., B.SC. (AGRI.),
        Assistant to Agricultural Chemist to Government, Punjab.

                 (Received for publication on 24th March 1931.)
                                  (With Two figures.)

    The Kangra District has long been notorious for the poor and neglected con-
dition of its cattle, and the equally unsatisfactory condition of the majority of the
people living in this tract. Malnutrition, whether of man or beast, may be due to
a variety of causes, either actual undernourishment due to insufficient food in
quantity, or to its being qualitatively deficient in certain ingredients necessary to
physical well-being. It is scarcely necessary to say that each of these factors
reacts on the other, and it is little use introducing new breeds of cattle into a
district, if a deficient food supply, either quantitative or qualitative, is likely
adversely to affect their condition. Under conditions such as are met with in
Kangra, what is most essential is a general improvement in feeding standards,
without which the introduction of valuable bulls will be of little use.

    No systematic investigations of the fodders used by cattle in Kangra have
yet been carried out, nor has it been possible yet to conduct well regulated feeding
experiments on the spot.

    Rice straw is the staple cattle feed of the District and only in exceptional
cases do the cattle receive concentrates and green materials to supplement this
sparse inadequate diet. In order to throw some light on the degree of inadequacy
of this ration, feeding experiments were carried out at Lyallpur with this material,
the results of which are embodied in this paper. A very brief description of the
District may, however, first be given.

    Kangra is the most northern of the five districts of the Jullundur Division
and embraces an area of some 10,000 square miles, extending from the plains of
the Bari and Jullundur Doabs over the Himalayan ranges to the boundary of Tibet.
It may be divided into three main agricultural divisions :—(a) the irrigated parts

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