GREEN FOOD IN SILOS. 185 



Professor Goessmann. Yes, sir : quite sufficient to re- 

 duce it to the smallest quantity. You will find the outside 

 portion of the hay injured rather more than the interior 

 part, because that affords a freer passage for the air. 



Dr. Faxon. A gentleman just asked about putting in 

 hay green to make brown haj^. It should be known that it 

 is not necessary to dry hay a great deal. I will relate an 

 operation of mine, simply to show you how a large mass of 

 partially dried green fodder can be put in. Some seven 

 year ago I mowed about ten acres of Hungarian grass, 

 mixed with wormwood : it was almost as ^thick as it could 

 stand. I finished cutting it at night, and left it until the 

 next morning. The next day that stuff was as green as it 

 could be. There was certainly as much as twenty tons of it, 

 two-thirds or more wormwood. I made a stack of it, thatched 

 the top, and it steamed there until February. I did not cut 

 that down until August, the second year after; and there was 

 not a brown straw in it : it was just as dry and fresh as it 

 could be, showing that there was not enough water left in 

 the stack to produce any organic change, or else that it all 

 worked off in steam. That was the best lot of hay I ever 

 saw of that kind. There was not a foot of it at the top 

 damaged. 



Major Emeey (of Lowell). I certainly, for one, have felt 

 more pleasure, and been more benefited, by this lecture, 

 than by any paper or any lecture I have ever heard or read 

 since I have been in the farminfx business. It seems to me 

 that either chemistry must go under, or this silo business. 

 I think chemistry has done more for farming than any thing 

 else of late years. I think it has taught us more in the 

 right direction, and in the end will produce more. It will 

 revolutionize most of our modes of farming. 



I have discussed this same subject with Dr. Bailey at 

 Billerica; and, to show you how people look over the surface, 

 I will name one thing that came up. He took the ground 

 that fermentation created and brought out the sugar, which 

 is entirely different from the fact. I took the ground that 

 fermentation brought out the alcohol. Now, we have had 

 the yellow-fever in the West, and we have had a commission 

 of the Board of Health to look after it, and see if there can- 

 not be a stop put to it. We have had the small-pox in many 



