ENSILAGE. 395 



that bears upon this. When a boy, I was devoted to silk- 

 worms, and my very small supply of pocket-money was 

 over-taxed in the purchase of exorbitantly small penny- 

 worths of mulberry leaves at Covent Garden. But a friend 

 in the country had a mulberry tree, and at rather long in- 

 tervals I obtained large supplies, which, in spite of all my 

 careful wrapping in damp cloths, became rotted in about 

 ten days. I finally tried digging a hole and burying them. 

 They 'remained fresh and green until all my silkworms 

 commenced the working and fasting stage of their exist- 

 ence. This was ensilage on a small scale. 



The correspondence in the newspapers has suggested a 

 number of reasons why English farmers do not follow the 

 example of their continental neighbors in this respect; 

 climate, difference of grasses, etc., etc., are named, but the 

 real reason why this is commercially impossible, and farm- 

 ing, properly so called, is becoming a lost art in England 

 (mere meadow or prairie grazing gradually superseding it) 

 is not named in any part of the discussion that I have 

 read. 



I refer to the cause which is abolishing the English dairy, 

 which drives us to the commercial absurdity of importing 

 fragile eggs from France, Italy, Spain, etc. , apples from 

 the other side of the Atlantic, tame house-fed rabbits from 

 Belgium, and so on, with all other ngricultural products 

 Avhich are precisely those we are naturally best able to pro- 

 duce at home; I mean those demanding a small area of 

 land and a proportionately large amount of capital and labor. 

 A poultry or rabbit farm, acre for acre, demands fully ten 

 times the capital, ten times the labor, and yields ten times 

 the produce obtained by oflr big-field beef and mutton 

 graziers. 



The scientific and economic merits of ensilage are proba- 

 bly all that is claimed for it, and it is especially adapted for 

 our uncertain haymaking climate, but what farmer who is 

 merely a lodger on the land, holding it as an annual tenant- 

 at-will or under a stinted beggarly lease of 21 years,, would 

 expend his capital in building a costly silo, which becomes 

 bv our feudal laws and usages the absolute propertv of the 

 landlord ? 



