INTRODUCTION TO NEW EDITION. 5 



the ground. As the earth is the common mother of us all, so 

 is she the great preserver of all things. The first idea which 

 occurred to the primitive man when he wished to preserve any 

 thing valuable or which" he prized was, without doubt, to bury 

 it in the earth. 



So that, after all, the system of ensilage is not so much a 

 new dispensation as one of the " lost arts," which, after the 

 lapse of centuries, has just been re-discovered, improved, 

 adapted to the requirements of modern civilization, and which 

 is destined to be the means of producing a revolution in our 

 agricultural methods. Allow me, in this introduction to this 

 NEW EDITION, to express my cordial thanks and appreciation 

 of the by far too-flattering notices which " The Book of Ensi- 

 lage " has received from the press. Editors and reviewers 

 have, with scarce an exception, spoken only to commend, 

 touching but lightly, if at all, upon the faults of style and 

 diction, which are many, realizing that it was a book written 

 by a working farmer in order that that which was hard and 

 perplexing for him to accomplish, with none to advise or in- 

 struct, might be made plain and easy to his fellow-farmers. 

 Also to the many gentlemen, eminent in all the walks of life, 

 for the kind and grateful letters in which they have shown their 

 appreciation of my humble efforts to improve the condition of 

 the farmers of America, upon whose prosperity depends not 

 only the well-being of all other classes, but the very stability 

 and permanence of our democratic institutions. 



I am grateful also for the success, I see by accounts in the 

 papers, which has attended the efforts of so large a number of 

 those, who, in the early stages of their experiment, solicited and 

 received all the help my experience could render. The possibili- 

 ties of ensilage can hardly be over-estimated. When I said in 

 my first edition that 40 to 75 tons of green-corn fodder could be 

 raised upon an acre of land, provided proper seed was used, suffi- 

 cient manure was applied, and the right kind of cultivation be- 

 stowed, many doubted, and some ridiculed the statement ; " but 

 he laughs best who laughs last ; " and I am happy to be able to 

 state that one of my neighbors has raised corn-fodder this year 

 weighing at the rate of 72 tons to the acre, and that his whole 



