1882.] ' ENSILAGE. 113 



will give us in this country something like the results they 

 have in England from Mr. Lawes' experiments. 



Dr. Miles. I have very little to say on this subject. I am 

 rather looking for information in regard to it myself. I 

 suppose I made the first ensilage ever made in America. I 

 put up pits of fodder corn in 1875. I likewise put up some 

 broom corn. This was done in the State of Illinois. The 

 results of those experiments were satisfactory to me in sev- 

 eral respects. I would say that I took up the matter in con- 

 sequence of the statements that had been made in the foreign 

 publications which 1 had access to. I saw that people were 

 using ensilage to a considerable extent in France and Ger- 

 many, and 1 wanted to see how it would work over here. I 

 was satisfied that there would be no difficulty whatever in 

 keeping fodder in good condition for feeding to animals and 

 that the animals would relish it. 1 was satisfied, however (I 

 may have been hasty in my conclusions), that it wonld not 

 pay out west, where corn is cheap and corn-stalks are sold at 

 ten cents an acre. That is, the advantages gained would 

 not justify us in the labor involved in putting up this fodder. 

 I published the results in 1876, I think, in the " Country 

 Gentleman," and there made the suggestion that we adopt 

 these terms, " silo " and " ensilage," as convenient terms for 

 describing this process. The papers before that had, in their 

 little items, referred to the French practice and the German 

 practice of ensilage, and had attempted to make a rough 

 translation of the terms, and they spoke of " pitting corn fod- 

 der" and "potting corn fodder." The favorite term used 

 in English papers was " potting," and in America it was 

 "pitting." The first silos were made in earth. An excava- 

 tion was made in the ground, and fodder put in, and then 

 covered with earth, precisely as we cover potatoes in the fall; 

 and I saw in one of the very latest numbers of a French 

 periodical that I have that a gentleman who has practiced 

 the system to a considerable extent had silos of masonry, 

 which he prefers to earth pits. So that it would not be dif- 

 ficult for anyone to make an experiment on a small scale in 

 regard to the matter. 

 8 



