Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 January 1876 — The Food Equivalent of Health. [ARTICLE]

The Food Equivalent of Health.

Gen. Sherman, in his chapter oh the “ Military Lessons of the American War,” says: ‘‘To be strong, healthy and capable of the largest measure of physical effort, the soldier needs about three pounds gross of food per day, and the horse or mule about twenty pounds. An ordinary army wagon drawn by six mules may be counted on to carry 3,000 pounds net, equal to the food of a full regiment for one day; but by driving along beef cattle a commissary may safely count the contents of one wagon as sufficient for two days’ food for a regiment of 1,000 men; and as a corps should have food on hand for twenty days ready for detachment, it should have 300 such wagons as a provision train; and for forage, ammunition, clothing and other necessary stores it was found necessary to have 300 more wagons, or 600 wagons in all tor a wrpa d'armee. Each regiment ought usually to have at least one wagon for convenience in distributing stores, and each company two pack mules, so that the regiment may always certain of a meal on reaching camp without waiting for the larger trains.” A curious calculation of a similar nature exists, made by TempelhofF, a Prussian General, the historian of Frederick’s wars: ‘‘One hundred thousand men,” he says, ‘‘consume daily 150,000 pounds of tiour, equal to 200,000 pounds of bread. Bread and forage are seldom to be had in sufficient quantities on the spot—hence magazines are established along the line of operations. The bread wagons carry a supply for six days, the men for three more. In commissariat wagons flour for nine additional days could be conveyed—one wagon to 100 min for nine days, thus 1,000 wagons supplied the army for that time. An operation of eighteen days’ duration could thus be conducted without an intervening magazine, but field ovens were required to make the flour into bread. But bread for three days requires two days to bake it; at the end of six days, therefore, a halt must be made to bake or the ovens would fall behindhand with the supply; so that, in advancing into an enemy’s country before magazines could be formed there, six days was the extent of march practicable t without a halt.” —The Hartford (Conn.) Courant publishes an interesting German letter from Charles Dudley Warner which went down with the Deutschland, and was rescued, scarcely legible, from the sea. —A statistician t estimates that courtships average three' tons of coal each.