The Silo and Silage-stack Competition, 1885-86. 269 
and covered over with gravel and soil. It is sufficient to say that the silage 
was of good quality, and with very little waste. But it could hardly lju 
called a silage stack. 
III. — The South and South-West of England. By 
Prof. James Long, of Graveley Manor, Stevenage. 
It having been arranged at the meeting of Judges at Hanover 
Square that the West and South- West of England should be 
allotted to Mr. John Wheatley and myself, we commenced our 
inspection on the 11th of November by visiting the farm of 
Colonel Stallard, at Claines, near Worcester, on which were 
two silos entered for competition by Messrs. Bayliss, Jones, and 
Bayliss, of Victoria Works, Wolverhampton. I may observe, 
in the commencement of my Report, that my colleague and 
myself began our duties with the assumption that the chief 
aim of the silo is to make or preserve a maximum amount of 
silage at a minimum cost ; that to this end it should be simple 
and effective in its arrangement, and economical in its working 
and construction ; that the system of pressure adopted should 
neither be complicated nor costly ; and that, as far as possible, 
a silo should be a building, or part of a building, adaptable to 
other purposes of the farm, and not a mere receptacle for fodder, 
which, in those years when silage is not made, would be of 
no practical use whatever. It will be seen by the Report that 
each of the silos placed in the highest position combined these 
qualifications, more especially those of Mr. John Morris and 
Mr. W. J. Harris, and that, altuough the silos of Messrs. 
Kirby and Trepplin are covered with earth, an eminently satis- 
factory plan, the pressing arrangements adopted by the two 
first-named gentlemen are home-made and simple in the extreme, 
which cannot be said of some of the other systems of mechanical 
pressure referred to in this Report. 
Silos. 
Messrs. Bayliss, Jones, and Bayliss's Silo. — Messrs. Bayliss, Jones, and Bay- 
liss, as already stated, entered two silos for competition. No. 1 was 16 feet by 
10 feet 8 inches, by 10 feet in height. It is described as a " Patent Conver- 
tible Iron Silo," the sides being composed of galvanised iron sheets, secured 
to Tee-iron uprights. The iron sheets were 10 feet deep, by 2 feet wide, and 
wedged in to the Tee-iron with tow, in order to make the silo air- and water- 
tight. There was no projection in the interior of the walls to cause resistance 
in the operation of treading or shrinking of the silage, and the corners were 
satisfactorily rounded. To give further strength to the walls, iron ribs were 
threaded through the uprights every 14 inches, and steel angle-bars were 
wedged vertically between these horizontal ribs and the galvanised sheets, thus 
binding the whole fabric together, and — the maker's claim in addition — 
making it a " very rigid and firm structure." This, however, is what it 
certainly is not, for the walls bulged, and the whole erection was shaken when 
