838 



SEYMOUR, ORIGEN S. 



SILOS, CONSTRUCTION AND USES. 



destroy the sovereignty of the people. Hap- 

 pily, the voters of France penetrated the scheme 

 of Garabetta, and, by defeating it, signified to 

 him that his day was over. 



SEYMOUR, ORIGEN STORKS, born in Litch- 

 field, Connecticut, February 9, 1804; died Au- 

 gust 12, 1881. His first appearance in public 

 life dated from his election to the Connecticut 

 Legislature in 1832 as a member from his native 

 town. In 1855 he was chosen a Judge of the 

 Superior Court, where he served with distinc- 

 tion for eight years. In 1870 he was appointed 

 to the Supreme Court, and in 1873 was made the 

 Chief -Justice. In 1874 he left that high office 

 in consequence of the constitutional limitation 

 of age. Previous to his judicial career he had 

 served in Congress, having been elected to the 

 Thirty-first and re-elected to the Thirty-third 

 Congress. 



SILOS, THEIR CONSTRUCTION AND USES. 

 These are pits for the preservation of succulent 

 herbage without drying. The preserved con- 

 tents of the pit are called ensilage. The silo, as 

 formerly employed in modern agriculture, con- 

 sisted of an excavation in the earth, usually in 

 an elongated form, into which green herbage 

 was placed in its succulent condition, and then 

 covered with earth to exclude air. The pit 

 was dug in some dry locality into which water 

 would not penetrate, and the vegetable matter 

 laid upon the hire earth, but protected from 

 above with boards or other means for pre- 

 venting the dirt to be thrown over it from 

 mixing with the contents of the silo, and the 

 whole was then covered with a deep layer of 

 earth. In this situation the vegetation is pre- 

 served from putrefactive decay from three to 

 six months or more, and apparently in a con- 

 dition but little changed from what it was 

 when first buried. This form of silo has been 

 largely in use in Europe, especially in France 

 and Austria, for many years, for preserving, 

 for the winter food of domestic animals, the 

 tops and pulp of beets from which sugar had 

 been made, and also green clover, the stalks of 

 maize, and various other vegetable produc- 

 tions not easily desiccated. It is deemed a mat- 

 ter of considerable importance by agricultur- 

 ists to be able to avoid the necessity of desic- 

 cating cattle-food for winter use, and especially 

 desirable to supply neat stock with food in a 

 green and succulent condition, that being the 

 state in which nature seems to have designed 

 them to take it. 



Though ensilage when taken from such silos 

 six months after burial appears very much as it 

 did when first put in, it is known that it under- 

 goes material changes, some of which are ben- 

 eficial, and others are the occasion of serious 

 loss. The first change is that of sugar into 

 lactic acid, the presence of which softens the 

 crude fiber, rendering some of it soluble and 

 digestible which was insoluble before. The 

 presence of the newly formed acid also con- 

 tributes to changing the amylaceous matters 

 into glucose, which gives them an enhanced 



value for food. But the glucose does not re- 

 main stable. In its moist and moderately 

 warm condition it goes into lactic acid, like aU 

 other saccharine matters under such circum- 

 stances, when its food-value becomes a mat- 

 ter of uncertainty. If air were entirely ex- 

 cluded from the ensilage, the changes would 

 stop here, and the loss probably be trifling, 

 and perhaps entirely balanced by the increased 

 digestibility of the fiber. But air is never en- 

 tirely excluded from an earth-pit. The ground 

 is not impervious to air or other gases. The 

 oxygen of the air permeates the earthy cover- 

 ing, and upon reaching the damp ensilage 

 stimulates alcoholic and acetous fermentations, 

 which cause decomposition, and the evolution 

 of carbonic-acid gas and heat. The top of 

 the ensilage, which comes most in contact with 

 the air, is most affected, the measure of loss 

 being determined by the supply of air. The 

 following, from analyses by Moser and Gohren, 

 at the distinguished experiment-station at Vi- 

 enna, of green fodder-corn before and after 

 ensilage, will indicate the character and loca- 

 tion of loss common in silos made by excava- 

 tions in the earth. The corn was in blossom 

 when cut, and was packed in silos of medium 

 size, and covered with a layer of dirt several 

 feet in thickness. A hundred pounds of the 

 green corn gave 18'85 pounds of dry solids, of 

 which 6 - 67 were crude fiber, leaving 12-18 of 

 solid matter available for food. The ash from 

 these solids was '6 per cent. As the ash does 

 not vary by reason of any changes in a silo, a 

 comparison of the weight of dry solids required 

 to yield a given amount of ash before and after 

 going into a silo, will show whether there is 

 any loss by ensilaging, and, if so, how much. 

 Since '6 of a pound of ash comes from 100 

 pounds of green corn before going into the silo, 

 the ensilage from 100 pounds of green corn 

 must also yield -6 of a pound of ash. After 

 being six months in a silo, a sample of ensilage 

 from the green corn analyzed as above, taken 

 fifteen inches from the top of the silo, required 

 but 9*9 pounds of dry matter, instead of 18'85 

 pounds, to produce *6 of a pound of ash, show- 

 ing a loss of 8'95 pounds of dry matter, of 

 which '89 of a pound was crude fiber, and the 

 rest, 8'06 pounds, was available food-elements, 

 indicating a loss of very nearly two thirds of 

 the food-element contained in the green corn. 

 Another sample of ensilage from the same silo, 

 taken thirty inches from the top, and conse- 

 quently less exposed to access of air, required 

 12'47 pounds of dry matter to produce *6 of a 

 pound of ash, showing a loss of only 6 - 38 

 pounds, of which -51 was crude fiber, and the 

 rest, 5 - 87 pounds, was available food-element, 

 or nearly one half of the original food in the 

 green corn. In another silo a sample of ensi- 

 lage, taken three feet from the surface, showed, 

 when compared with the green corn, a loss of 

 45 per cent of the food-elements in the corn 

 before ensilaging. As the silos from which 

 these samples of ensilage were taken were 



