SILOS, E.NSILAGE AHD SILAGE. 11 



closed with a separate wall ; and some of the rooms in 

 which they housed the grain appear to have had vaulted 

 roofs. These were filled through an aperture near the 

 top, to which the men ascended by steps, and the grain 

 when wanted was taken out from a door at the base."* 



These storage rooms were, in fact, silos of masonry 

 above ground, and a marked improvement on the rude 

 trenches mentioned by Pliny. 



In an interesting article on Ensilage by Mr. H. W. 

 Jenkins, Secretary of the Royal Agricultural Society of 

 England, it is stated that the practice of storing grain in 

 silos was brought by the Moors into Spain ; but the state- 

 ment of Pliny given above, in connection with other his- 

 torical data, would lead to the more probable supposi- 

 tion that the Eomans introduced the system into Spain, 

 as well as other grain-growing provinces of the Empire, 

 and that if the Moors brought silos into notice for the 

 preservation of grain, it was but a revival of an old 

 Roman practice, f 



From the many valuable suggestions in regard to the 

 storing of grain contained in the paper by Mr. Jenkins, 

 we quote as follows: " In France, the system of ensilage 

 was originally imported from Spain, with a view to the 

 preservation of cereals from years of plenty to years of 

 scarcity. It is recorded by Mons. L. Doye*re, that the 

 proprietor of the estate of Palerne, in the Puy de Dome, 

 put his corn, harvested in 1820 and 1821, in silos con- 

 structed for the purpose, and kept the grain in them 

 until the end of 1828, when, prices having risen to 



*"The Ancient Egyptians," by Wilkinson, Vol. 1, pp. 31-32, from which Figs. 

 1 and 2 are copied. 



tin a foot-note to Mr. Jenkins' paper (1. c. p. 128), a quotation is given from a 

 French work published in 1804, as follows: "In 1707 there was discovered in 

 the citadel of Metz a large quantity of corn (grain) , placed there in 1528, in one 

 of the underground rooms, where it was so well preserved that the bread which 

 was made from it, two centuries after it had been placed there was found very 

 good. There exists now (1804), at Ardres, department of the Pas de Calais, one 

 of these underground places made by the Romans." 



