GREEN FOOD IN SILOS. 157 



but judicious to investigate carefully any system of opera- 

 tion, new to our farm practice, which proposes to improve 

 our present chances of securing economically an increased 

 supply of green food, and thereby enable us to support 

 more live-stock. The reduced area of lands serving as 

 natural pastures, their quite frequently exhausted condition, 

 the large demands for fodder in the dairy business, the in- 

 creasing prospects of remunerative production of meat for 

 the general market, the gradual change of an extensive sys- 

 tem of general farming to an intensive one, — each, in its 

 own way, tends to direct our attention to the consideration 

 of the fodder question. Increased production of the fodder- 

 crops is the most characteristic feature in our modern 

 intensive system of general farm management. In the pre- 

 vailing intensive system of farming in the most successful 

 districts of Europe, from one-third to one-half of the entire 

 area of cultivated lands is devoted to the raising of fodder- 

 crops. The statement that plenty of fodder produces plenty 

 of manure, and that plenty of home-made manure produces 

 a plenty of remunerative crops, is there quite generally 

 accepted as a safe rule. As the more prominent discussion 

 of the silo system in our agricultural periodicals is, com- 

 paratively speaking, of a quite recent date, and the actual 

 tests in our farm practice are still of an exceptional occur- 

 rence, it is not strange that quite opposite views regarding 

 its real merits in our situation find their advocates. This 

 stage of opinion is apparently, in a large measure, due to 

 two circumstances : first, to a frequent misapprehension re- 

 garding the composition and the feeding value of the silo 

 product — the ensilage — as compared with the original green 

 crop ; and, second, to the adoption of a different basis for 

 the estimation of economical points involved. Without in- 

 tending to detract any thing from the well-tleserved recogni- 

 tion of the merits of the valuable experiments of John M. 

 Bailey, Esq., of Billerica, Mass., and others elsewhere within 

 the country, or to anticipate the final results of their practi- 

 cal investigations, I propose to discuss in a few subsequent 

 pages the silo system with reference to its history in Europe, 

 and from the stand-point of a careful scientific inquiry. 



The preservation of green food in silos is at present 

 mainly recommended for juicy plants, or parts of plants, 



