CHAPTER XXIX. 



NEW FORAGE PLANTS AND NEW USES FOR ENSILAGE. 



IN concluding this new edition, let me urge all enter- 

 prising farmers to try experiments in raising the various 

 forage plants ; especially let us seek for a plant which 

 will grow during the fall and spring months, and yield a 

 crop approximating the yield of corn. There are many 

 weeds, biennials, which make their principal growth in 

 the fall months of the first season and the early months 

 of the second season, reaching their full growth in sea- 

 son to grow corn. They might become very valuable to 

 grow upon light lands which suffer severely by the 

 drought in the summer months. Why may not hybridi- 

 zation do as much to improve our forage plants as it has 

 to improve our vegetables and small fruits, and to clothe 

 with new beauties the common garden flowers of half a 

 century ago ? 



I believe that we are upon the eve of an entire change 

 in preserving not only forage plants for our domestic 

 animals, but that the true way to preserve herbs is to 

 gather them fresh, and press them into tight jars or cans, 

 and hermetically seal them ; also that tea might and will 

 be preserved in small sealed cans with all its delicate 

 flavors and aroma unimpaired by exposure to the atmos- 

 phere during the process of curing by drying. To cure 



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