36 SILOS, ENSILAGE AND SILAGE. 



ing the two or three days after .being put in pit, and he 

 has kept it even to the end of July without any change. 

 The maize should be as nearly as possible to maturity 

 before it is cut for ensilage. When fermented, the ani- 

 mals eat it as readily as when green." 



Many similar statements of success in the ensilage of 

 maize may be found in the agricultural papers of France 

 previous to 1876, but these are sufficient to show that 

 the system of M. Reihlen, as described by M. Vilmorin- 

 Andrieux in 1870, was at once received with favor by 

 the French farmers, and practically adopted on an ex- 

 tensive scale. 



In 1877, M. Auguste Goffart, a gentleman farmer of 

 France, published his book on Ensilage, which was 

 translated and published in New York in the winter of 

 1878-9. As this translation had a wide circulation, 

 some 2,000 copies having been sold and given away, it 

 has generally been accepted as the standard authority on 

 the subject, and it has been repeatedly claimed that M. 

 Goffart was the inventor of the system which he so 

 enthusiastically advocates. There is, however, nothing 

 new in M. Goffart's methods, as the ensilage of maize 

 had been extensively practiced in France and Germany 

 for several years before the publication of his book, and 

 a number of farmers in France were practically familiar 

 with ensilage, at least two or three years previous to his 

 first successful experiment.* The honors conferred on 



*In a note to his article already referred to Mr. Jenkins says: "Most English 

 writers on ensilage during the last two years, have followed several American 

 authors in saying that M. GofEart made his first experiment on ensilage with 

 Indian corn, in 1852. This is a mistake. What M. Goffart says is, that in 1852 

 he began to study, practically, the important problem of the preservation of 

 forage (' C'est ct, probleme de la conservation des fourrages'). He also states (p. 185, 

 4th edition), that until 1873 he had scarcely believed in the possibility of pre- 

 serving green maize, but in that year he was very successful, chiefly by accident, 

 vtnd he gives (p. 186) the following statement of what he heard his foreman say 

 to the workpeople: ' M Goffart noun fait fairs la une sotte besoine; il ferait bien 

 mieiix de jettr, tout de suite, sou mai's sur la fumier, il fandra tonjours qu' il finisse 

 par la.'" Jour. Roy. Agr'l Soc , 1884=, p. 135. " This work that we are doing is 

 all foolishness; M. Goffart had better throw his maize into the dung heap at once, 

 because that is where it will go at last." Brown's Translation of Goffart, p. 42. 



