HAY MAKING IN RAINY COUNTRIES. 815 
out the large mass and no doubt destroys the germs 
of mold as well. 
Brown Hay.—This heating in the mow destroys 
the green color of alfalfa and makes it brown or 
yellow. It does not therefore appear so attractive 
yet most animals eat it all the more greedily for 
this heating that it has undergone. It has not really 
been injured except that it has lost a little in weight. 
Storer very nicely says of this brown hay: 
Besides the plan of having hay undergo in the making some 
slight fermentation, in connection with the true sweating, there 
is another much more emphatic conception put in practice in 
the process of making brown hay, so called. This is a process 
which is dependent upon decompositions that are a good deal 
more incipient; but which has nevertheless found favor in many 
districts, especially in countries where the weather can never 
be depended upon for making hay by the usual process. 
In making brown hay, most of the water of the grass is 
driven off by the heat of fermentation, only about a third of the 
originnzl moisture being dried off by sun and air in the first 
place. Far from seeking to bring the hay into contact with the 
air, the chief care in this process is to exclude air from the hay. 
For making brown hay, grass that has been wilted to such an 
extent that the leaves have shriveled, although the stalks are 
still plump, is heaped up either in rather large masses or in 
smaller heaps that have been trodden in such wise that the 
air shall be well-nigh or altogether excluded from the interior 
of the heap./ Under these conditions, fermentation soon sets 
in and proceeds with a good degree of regularity. In the course 
of it the heap becomes very hot, often as hot as the temperature 
of boiling water, the hay takes on a deep brown color, and gives 
off an odor of caramel or burnt sugar. 
In point of fact, some of the constituents of the hay undergo 
the well-known fermentation which chemists distinguish as the 
alcoholic, the lactic and ihe butyric; in other words, a consid- 
erable part of the carbohydrates in the hay, notably the sugar 
and the dextrin, are changed to alcohol, carbonic acid and lactic 
and butyric acids. Of course, a considerable proportion of the 
carbohydrates are destroyed by these changes. The large amount 
of heat that is developed comes from the destruction of these 
