44 THE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



F.L.S. This gentleman has demonstrated that the nature of 

 the product, whether sweet or sour, entirely depends upon 

 management. If the material is placed in the silo, free from 

 rain water, and the silo is slowly filled without undue pressure, 

 a fermentation, accompanied with a high temperature, say 

 120° to 130°, ensues, which is sufficient to destroy bacteria, which 

 are the cause of the acid stages of fermentation. And when 

 the fermentation has gone on for three or four days, it can be 

 arrested at the sweet stage by applying pressure. In this way 

 he has succeeded in producing a very good silage, in which the 

 loss of carbohydrates is not serious, and provided it is used at 

 once, and not left exposed to the air after being cut out, it 

 supplies excellent food. Another very important stage of our 

 knowledge, only recently reached, is that good silage can be made 

 in stacks without the intervention of costly silos at all. The 

 Council of the E. A. S. E. very wisely supplemented their last 

 president's prize of 100 guineas for the best silo in operation 

 during the winter of 1885-86 by a prize of 261. "for the best 

 stack or other system of obtaining silage without a silo." There 

 were nine competitors, and the prize was awarded to Mr. C. G-. 

 Johnson, of Croft, near Darlington. We subjoin Mr. C. G-. 

 Eoberts's Eeport: "In this design the stack is built in the 

 ordinary form, the pressure is supplied by flexible galvanised 

 iron wire rope passing over the top of the stack, and looped on 

 to a crutch at one end of crossheads, which move loosely up and 

 down on the screwed bars made fast to logs of wood which are 

 held down by the weight of the stack built upon them. The 

 rope is passed over the top of the stack and hitched on to a 

 corresponding crutch at the other side, and returning at short 

 intervals, is laced over the whole series of crutches on all the 

 crossheads, and then made fast by hitching it round the last 

 crutch. The crossheads are then tightened down, one at a 

 time, by screwing the nut on the upper side of each of them ; 

 the screws are four feet long, to allow amply for the settling of 

 the stack between one day's stacking and the next. The screws 

 are so adjusted that the spanners, pulled with a force of 401b., 

 exert a pressure of IJ cwt. per square foot on the stack. When 

 the silage is used the wire ropes are thrown off from one cross- 

 head at a time, and the pressure continues undisturbed on the 



