THE COMPLETE GRAZIER. 



luxuriantly on river-sides, where its purple panicles form conspicuous 

 objects in August and September. In some localities it is known as 

 " spear grass," though this term may be taken to include the reed 

 canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea) and the sedges (Carex), which grow 

 with the great reed beside the streams. This coarse material, cut 

 and dried, makes serviceable thatch. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



ON ENSILAGE. 



rjIHE advantage of possessing succulent food for winter consumption 

 JL has been recognised at all times, but it has been found difficult 

 to secure. A portion of the root crop has, as a rule, been given to 

 the cattle in the yards, but no convenient and cheap method of 

 preserving surplus herbage, grown during seasons of plenty, for con- 

 sumption when food was scarce, had been brought into practice in 

 England until after the year 1880. Before that year, and indeed for 

 two or three years subsequently, scarcely any English farmers had 

 seen a sample of silage, yet in less than ten years from the time of the 

 first experiment the system of making silage had become an established 

 and even a common practice on the farm. The uncertainty of the 

 British climate renders the making of good hay very difficult, and in 

 some seasons impracticable ; therefore, any additional means of retain- 

 ing the feeding properties in grasses and other forage plants, and at 

 the same time not destroying their succulence, is of great value. This 

 can be satisfactorily effected by the process of ensilage. As the making 

 of silage is an ancient practice which has been maintained in some 

 countries for centuries, and as Englishmen have long been in the habit 

 of ensiling grains in summer-time for winter consumption, it is strange 

 that, as the hay crop was so frequently ruined by wet weather, the 

 practice did not earlier obtain a place among the methods of English 

 farmers. Although ensilage was adopted on a considerable scale in 

 France and North America during the latter part of the seventies, 

 Englishmen remained sceptical as to its value, and classed it with other 

 theoretical ideas such as are often suggested to the farmer and frequently 

 prove useless. 



There was a special excuse for not adopting the practice of ensilage, 

 as, after great expense in bringing out machinery and making elaborate 

 experiments therewith, an equally lauded process for preserving unmade 

 hay in stacks, by drawing out the moisture by means of exhaust fans, 

 had quite recently been proved to be worthless. The two processes of 

 ensilage and of exhausting air by means of the fan were totally opposed, 

 for in the former the effort was to exclude air, and in the latter to 



