12 SILOS, ENSILAGE AND SILAGE. 



double their figure of seven years before, he opened the 

 silos and found the grain practically uninjured. It is 

 true that a small layer at the top, immediately under 

 the straw which separated the grain from the hermet- 

 ically sealed cover, was a little mouldy, and the silo con- 

 tained a quantity of carbonic-acid gas when first opened. 

 But the bulk of the grain was perfectly preserved, and 

 the proprietor of the estate was so satisfied with his suc- 

 cess that he gave instructions for other silos to be built. 

 "Unfortunately, his death shortly afterwards put an end 

 to his projects. 



"So far as I can judge, the first Frenchman to call 

 attention to this method of preserving corn was 

 Count de Lasteyrie, who published a work on the sub- 

 ject in 1819. Then a trial of the system was made by 

 M. Ternaux, at Saint Ouen, and the 'Societe royal et 

 centrale d ? Agriculture de France' appointed a commis- 

 sion to report on the experiment. This report, pre- 

 sented in December, 1826, was eminently unfavorable, 

 and for a considerable time prevented any further at- 

 tempts at the ensilage of corn. M. Doy&re explains that 

 the conditions under which the experiment was made 

 were so extremely unfavorable, that failure was a fore- 

 gone conclusion. He mentions specially a very porous 

 sub-soil close to the Seine, and subject to infiltrations 

 of water from it, no attempt to render the walls of the 

 silo water-tight, and so forth. Therefore one need not 

 wonder that the corn was not well preserved. 



"After the publication of M. Doyere's report on the 

 Alucite of wheat, he was commissioned by the French 

 government to investigate more closely the question of 

 the preservation of cereals in silos, more especially in 

 Spain. His report was presented to the French Acad- 

 emy of Sciences at the end of 1855, and published the 

 following year as a pamphlet. Without stopping to 

 analyze this report, I think it desirable to give the fol- 



