220 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In 1870 M. Vilmorn called the attention of French farmers to the ad- 

 vantages of this method of preserving green fodder, which M. Reihlen 

 had then successfully practiced for many years. The new method was 

 so favorably received and extensively introduced in France, that it soon 

 became known as the French system of ensilage. The application 

 to a new crop of the old system of curing grass as " brown or sour 

 hay" was in fact accepted as a practically new method, which was 

 designated as the " ensilage of maize." 



M. Morel seems to have been the pioneer in the practice of the 

 new system, the results of his experience having been published in the 

 " Journal d' Agriculture pratique " of October 19, 1871. Others, en- 

 couraged by this report, followed his example, and for several years the 

 " ensilage of maize " was the leading topic of discussion in the agri- 

 cultural papers of France. In 1877 M. Auguste Goffart published, in 

 Paris, a work on ensilage, giving his experience for several years with 

 silos of masonry above ground, in which the covers of boards were 

 loaded to give a continuous pressure to the mass, and thus exclude the 

 air. The covering and weighting of the silo, as practiced by M. Goffart, 

 was an improvement on former methods, and it appears to be the only 

 point on which he can make a claim of originality. A translation of 

 this work, which has been the standard authority on ensilage, was 

 published in New York in 1878, and had a marked influence on the 

 introduction of the system in this country. 



As early as 1873 agricultural papers in Great Britain and America 

 gave occasional brief notices of the preservation of green fodder in 

 pits as practiced in France and Germany, and the process was usually 

 referred to as the "potting" or "pitting" of fodder. 



In 1875 three earth-silos were filled with fodder-corn and broom- 

 corn seed, under my direction, in Illinois, with results that were quite 

 satisfactory. These experiments were reported in " The Country Gen- 

 tleman " in 1876, page 627, together with an account of the experience 

 of several French farmers who had used ensilage on a large scale. In 

 this paper the French terms "silo " and "ensilage" were introduced, as 

 they had a definite meaning not well expressed by any English words, 

 and they are now in common use. 



Mr, Francis Morris, of Maryland, who has had the credit of making 

 the first experiments with ensilage in this country, made his first silo 

 in 1876. Others soon followed his example, and now we find silos in 

 every part of the country, and ensilage has become a familiar cattle- 

 food. The first silos, as we have seen, were simple pits dug in the 

 ground, and the soil thrown out was used to cover and protect the 

 ensilage. In many soils these pits served but a temporary purpose ; 

 and the next step in their development was a lining of masonry to 

 give the pits a permanent character. From the difficulty of keeping 

 the water out of these pits, in many localities, silos of masonry were 

 made above ground, and these at first were massive and expensive. 



