CATTLE-SOILING AND ENSILAGE. 821 



land. If the soil is rich and in good condition, the planting 

 season may continue till August. It is better to keep the land 

 cultivated than to allow it to become seeded with weeds, even 

 if only a light crop is grown, but in favorable autumns a heavy 

 crop of fodder-corn can be grown from as late seeding as this. 



Silos and Ensilage. The above terms have lately become 

 familiar to all readers of agricultural papers, but in our own 

 country few farmers ever saw a silo, and many have no definite 

 idea of what ensilage is. A silo is a pit, cistern, or bin, in 

 which green food can be preserved for feeding farm-stock through 

 the winter, and ensilage is the name given to the food thus pre- 

 served, without regard to what crop it is made from. 



Practically it is the same system as that by which we pre- 

 serve fruit by canning, the silo being a huge can, but as it can 

 not be so perfectly sealed as a fruit-can, there is always a slight 

 degree of fermentation in the food, which has led some farmers 

 to give to ensilage the name of " cow-krout." The first thing 

 which led to the discovery of the system of ensilage was 

 attempts to preserve the beet-pulp at the sugar factories in 

 France ; it was pitted as we bury potatoes, and kept for months 

 in this way. It was found that all that was necessary was an 

 economical plan to exclude the air. After it had been demon- 

 strated that beet-pulp could be kept in this way, a trial was 

 made with green corn. Trenches five feet deep were dug in dry 

 earth and filled with green corn-stalks, packed in flat and carried 

 up a few feet above the surface ; this was covered with straw 

 and weighted down with earth, and as it settled, more earth was 

 added to exclude the air. It was found that fodder could be 

 preserved in this way so that cattle would eat it readily, but 

 there was more fermentation than desirable. This mode of pre- 

 serving fodder was practiced for many years in Germany and 

 France. 



Experience soon showed that the closer the fodder was 

 packed the better it would keep, and the next step was to run 

 it through a cutting box, cutting it into lengths of half an inch 

 or less. It was found that it could be thus packed more closely, 

 requiring less space, and keeping better. Finally a Frenchman 



