LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 421 



Animals always relish the ensilage and eat it up clean, butts, cobs, and 

 everything. I have tried in my barn mangers, putting ensilage on one side 

 and good, bright hay and ground feed on the other, and the animals took 

 the ensilage first every time. 



They thrive on it, too. Col. F. D. Curtis, Prof. Ladd and I visited 

 together the barns of Mr. Woodward, the secretary of the New York State 

 Agricultural Society. He was feeding 200 head of cattle,* half of them on 

 ensilage and the other half on hay, and had given the hay half into the care 

 of a young man who had no faith in ensilage and was determined that 

 hay should beat in the trial. 



Now you may turn those 200 animals into a field together and I will 

 agree to pick out not fewer than 95 of the 100 ensilage fed animals on 

 account of their better appearance. 



My judgment of the value of ensilage is that by its means you can add 50 

 per cent to the number of your live stock, to your manure pile, to the fer- 

 tility of your farm and to your pocket. 



Eemember if you have a farm of 100 or 200 acres, that if you build your 

 first silo not more than 15 feet square it will not be long before you will be 

 building another one because the first one is too small. 



Ensilage is of itself a very good complete ration. It is grain and fodder 

 together. But if you prefer you can feed hay or bran or cotton meal in 

 connection with it, and perhaps it is best to give occasional variety in some 

 such way. It costs me less per acre to make ensilage of my corn than to 

 harvest it in the old way. 



Three tons of ensilage are worth about the same for feeding as one ton of 

 good hay. 



SEEDS. 



BY PROF. L. R. TAFT. 



Read at the Farmers' Institutes, at Grayling and North Lansing. 



The vegetable kingdom may be divided into two great classes, one con- 

 taining the flowering and the other the flowerless plants. 



To the latter belong the ferns, lichens, fungi and other cryptogams, 

 which reproduce by what are known as spores, while all other plants may 

 be placed in one great group whose ultimate object seems to be the repro- 

 duction of its kind, by the development of seeds. These are the phsenogams 

 or flowering plants. In their production of seed we find a great diversity in 

 the habits of plants; some known as annuals, like corn, oats and melons, pro- 

 duce a crop of seed the first year, and then die ; the biennials, as beets and 

 turnips, during the first year store up, either in the root or stem a supply of 

 food to be used the next year in the production of a seed stalk and seeds, 

 while the perennials may live for a series of years, and like the century plant, 

 die after the production of one crop of fruit, or may live on, year after 

 year producing their fruits annually, or at frequent intervals. 



There seems to be in all plants a certain degree of vigor from which maxi- 

 mum results can be obtained, and if they are allowed to vary from this con- 

 dition the growth of the plants, especially in the case of perennials will be 

 in inverse proportion to the seed production. 



