292 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



ventilators, which let out the compressed air, and which in all other 

 attempts to make dry clay brick, have caused them to crack, or explodedur- 

 ing the process of burning'. As the bricks can g-o direetlj' from the press to 

 the kiln, the saving- in cost of manufacture will be immense, and the bricks 

 when finished are almost as true and solid as dressed marble. I under- 

 stand a machine and right to use it will cost $1,000, and require two 

 horses' power to operate, making 6,000 bricks a day, with the labor of four 

 men. 



These bricks are made in Buffalo, N. Y.; the President of the company 

 is Mr. L. C. Woodruff. 



A New Forage Plant. 



Mr. Solon Eobinson. — I have lately heard a good deal said about a new 

 forage plant, said to have been taken from this country to France. Mr. 

 Lwdovic Lechant, Monsey, Rockland county, N. Y., has furnished me with 

 the fdllovving translation from the Bullelin de la Socieie cf Agriculture de 

 PonUAse (France,) which I will read to the Club. 



" I sincerely thank you for the kind reception you gave to my letter of 

 January last about beet culture, and ask leave to submit to you or the 

 American Farmers' Institute the following encomium upon a new grass, 

 which i find in a French historical journal, with an earnest prayer for your 

 or their opinion. If half what is said in that paper in regard to that won- 

 derful grass is true, it would, I think, be very important for the American 

 farmers to know it, and I feel pretty certain that you would not be back- 

 ward in commending that new hay to the agricultural community. But, if 

 instead of being 'a great conquest' it proves only to be 'a grand humbug' 

 I would feel grateful to you to tell us frankly so, for I think I see an effort 

 to puff tliat herb on the other side of the ocean (and may be on this side 

 too), and if it is not worthy of a test, we had better know it, and try to 

 save brother farmers from being duped and shaved. However, here is the 

 article referred to: 



" ' The Schrader Brome ( Bro'imis Schraderi, Knnih). 



" 'Tiiat grassy plant has been almost unknown until now in Europe, and 

 although it is originally of North America, y\%., the Carolinas, even there 

 it is seldom used or cultivated. 



" ' M. Alphonse Lavallee has made on this gramineous during six years, 

 several essays, and he has succeeded marvelously. 



" 'The Brome of Schrader is a perennial, quite hardy, vegetating vigor- 

 ously, capable of yielding four and even live crops (when mowed green) of 

 an excellent forage, peculiarly adapted to milch cows. 



" ' Tlic first mowing takes place as early as the month of March, if the 

 last mowing of tlie preceding year has been done early, and in all cases 

 not later than -the 20th of April, generally before rye is ready to be cut as 

 green fodder. When dried (cured ?), that Brome makes an excellent hay, 

 to which horses and cows get used very soon, and what is more astonish- 

 ing is that, according to M. Lavallee's statement, pigs eat it with relish. 

 Though it is a little tough (coarse ?), it is always eaten without chopping 

 by those animals, that always prefer it to wheat or oat straw. 



" ' The cows find in that grass a food specially favorable tcx the produo- 



