German Seed-Extracting Bstablishmcut. 29 



allow free circulation of dry air (wire net doors with movable 

 slat-shutters over them). 



The outer walls are also made of movable slat-shutters such 

 as one commonly finds used cheaply and easily in the better 

 equipped brick kilns. They are shut tight in damp weather and 

 opened when it is sunny and windy, in the same way as the door 

 slat-shutters. 



Standing on both sides of the central passage and arranged at 

 a distance of about 12 inches (30 cm) apart so that it is possible 

 to clean them are cone-silos, which are 10 feet (3 m) deep (from 

 the central passage toward the outer wall), five feet (1.5 m.) 

 wide, and for ease in filling them not over 10 feet (3 m) high. 

 The floor of these is sloped strongly toward the central passage 

 (a I to 2 slope) so that the cones will run out through a chute. 

 It is made of oak slats placed on edge, close together, and cut 

 I 1/5 X 3 inches (30 x 75 mm( with 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch (15 to 

 20 mm) space between. The walls of these silos are made of gal- 

 vanized wire net which is strong and of suitably small mesh sup- 

 ported on oak poles. Every such silo would hold about 340 

 bushels (120 hi) of cones after allowance for the space occupied 

 by the poles, braces, and walls ; therefore two or three silos take 

 a carload or double carload of cones ; one silo, about three farm- 

 ers' wagons full of cones. Smaller quantities can be kept sepa- 

 rate by laying old sacks between them. The number of these 

 silos necessary for the contemplated extent of the seed-house 

 business is placed behind on another on both sides of the cen- 

 tral passage. The cones in them are continuously surrounded 

 and reached everywhere by dry air; they continuously dry and 

 ripen. 



According to occasional observations of the extraction cost 

 of cones dried in this manner as compared with fresh cones, one 

 can reckon in Eberswalde a reduction in favor of the former of 

 about 6.5 per cent. If one wants to mark off in the individual 

 silos the quantity of each particular lot of cones by colored marks 

 for the sake of keeping check on them, this can be easily ar- 

 ranged; it is practicable, but it can not serve as a basis for the 

 measuring of cones and payment for them, because the higher 

 filled the silos are, so much the more compressed are the cones, 

 and consequently the diminished quantity removed from a silo 

 seems unfair to the person who originally supplied the cones. 



