122 BOAKD OF AGRICULTURE. 



culture of Europe in a manner that cannot be traced, but is 

 known to have been in practice in Hungary at the beginning 

 of the present century and probably as long in Germany. 

 An account of what was called ' ' Sauer-kraut for Cattle " can 

 be found in Arthur Young's "Annals of Agriculture," in the 

 form of a letter from Berlin, dated August 25, 1804. The 

 process in vogue in East Prussia was well described by 

 Grieswold in 1842, and other similar accounts exist of its 

 application in Spain, France and Mexico to the preservation 

 of diflereut vegetable products, including the leaves of trees 

 and vines. In Germany it was especially useful in keeping 

 beet leaves and beet pulp in sugar-making districts. Its ap- 

 plication to corn seems to have been accidental about thirty 

 years ago. It passed from Germany into France, and 

 August Goffart is to be mainly credited with bringing the 

 system to a state of greater perfection and economy than ex- 

 ists elsewhere in Europe. It was also mainly through the 

 efforts of M. Goffart, and the attention his work attracted, 

 that the silo was introduced into the United States. 



In the year 1873, and again in August, 1874, a description 

 of the Hunfyarian method of making " sour-fodder" in the 

 crude, trench form, appeared in the "American Agricultur- 

 ist." The same journal published in June, 1875, an illus- 

 trated account of the European experiments with ensilage 

 based upon reports in the Journal d* Agriculture Practique^ 

 of Paris. It is worthy of note that the much-abused United 

 States Agricultural Department Report contained, in the 

 volume for 1875 (pp. 39G-408), the first full description of 

 silos and ensilage published in this country, if not the first 

 in the English language. So our ignorance of this subject 

 ten or twelve years ago was due to a want of appreciation 

 of that freely-distributed public document. This article is 

 entitled, "The French Mode of Curing Forage," and deals 

 with its origin, the silos, the usual methods of cultivating 

 and manipulating crops for ensilage, the effects of fermenta- 

 tion and the value of ensilaire in stock feeding:. The oreneral 

 principles of ensilage were applied to the preservation of 

 different products in numerous places in America between 

 1870 and 1880. Prof. Manly Miles, at the Illinois Indus- 

 trial University, kept broom-corn seed and the green-corn 



