20 H. E. STEVENS ON ENSILAGE. 



CHAPTER III. 



CORRESPONDENCE FROM 



0". IMT. DV 

 PROFESSOR OF AGRICULTURE, HORTICULTURE, AJSD BOTAJSTT, 



OF THE 



UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE. 



A TREATISE ON THE ORIGIN OF THE PROCESS OF ENSILAGE. 



THE farming community is becoming greatly excited on the subject 

 of ensilage. Every agricultural paper fairly bristles with notices, 

 references, or accounts of experiments ; and the process already 

 boasts of a tolerably copious literature of its own. There seems to 

 be, in this country at least, considerable misapprehension on this 

 point. Two entirely distinct processes are strangely confounded, - 

 "ensilage" and "ensilage of maize." A Frenchman, Goffart, is 

 generally regarded as the person to whom the agricultural world is 

 indebted, not only for the origination and development of the ensilage 

 of maize, but also for the discovery and development of the process 

 of ensilage itself. The gentleman himself seems to clearly distin- 

 guish between the two, advancing no claims to the discovery of ensi- 

 lage, while boasting in no measured terms of having developed and 

 perfected the ensilage of maize, speaking of it as a " monument to 

 his fame, more enduring than brass." 



I have been greatly surprised at never having seen, in any of the 

 numerous articles upon this subject, some mention of the mode of 

 preserving grass for forage, as practised many years ago in East 

 Prussia. This process is fully described by Grieswald (1842) ; and 

 a translation of the passage is given in Stevens J s large work, "The 

 Farmer's Guide," which appeared in 1851, the year before Goffart 

 began his experiments. The process as therein detailed is so similar 



