512 = 246 
Practical Agriculture. 
>Ir. Jouas's late Mr. Samuel Jonas, of Chrishall Grange, Saffron Walde 
practice. introduced, or gave notoriety to, the practice of cutting up aloi 
with his straw, a small proportion of green fodder, such as r 
or tares, 1 cwt. to a ton of straw, while a bushel of salt 
sprinkled upon each ton of chaff, to cause a slight fermentatic 
and to sweeten and preserve the whole. The chaff is trodd 
down in a barn by a gang of boys, so as to fill the place 
solidly as possible, and it remains thus stored for sevei 
months together, being stored in spring and not used t 
October. A very marked superiority is found in the old stor 
chaff, as compared with chaff fresh cut. It heats considerab. 
and expands, so that he was obliged to strengthen the walls' 
his barn and tie them together with iron rods ; this expansi 
showing that some considerable change must take place in t 
substance of the mixture. 
Having a twelve-horse-power engine, Mr. Jonas was able 
cut the straw into chaff at once, as it comes from the threshi 
machine ; which he did with the same hands that would 
needed for carrying and stacking the straw. It took three m 
to straighten the straw in bunches for the cutter, two men ' 
carry it away, and half-a-dozen boys to trample it down, 
this way, he chaffed the straw of 8 to 10 acres in one day, a 
cost of Is. 6rf. per acre. 
The son, Mr. F. M. Jonas, succeeding his father on the sa 
farm, has improved upon the process, as thus described 
himself. 
" On this farm, which consists of 850 acres of avahle land, I cut into ci 
every year 100 or more acres of mown wheat or oat-straw, just as descri 
in the ' Journal ' ; but I use pulped mangold instead of tares, rye, &c., i 
can depend better upon the quantity of moisture contained in it ; and 
improved method costs me less than half what the work used to cost on 3 
same fam as described by my father. In the first place, the three men 
moving the straw from the barnworks to the chafif-box are done away with 
putting the chaff-box close up to the barnworks, only having a small boy v 
a forked stick to push the straw to the man feeding the chaff-box. Secoal 
I had Mr. Maynard to make a long elevator for the chaff-hdx, so that it j 
the chaff into the barn instead of three men caiTying it there in bags, 
this means I cut straw into chaff and deliver it into the barn with less ha 
than are usually employed to stack the straw." 
With the use of green crops only, the storage of cut str' 
could be practised only in the summer months ; but with mango 
pulp, the process can be followed all through the princi; 
winter threshing season. The addition of the green stuff 
pulped roots causes the straw-chaff mixture to heat. 1 
volatile and odoriferous principles evolved by the fermentat 
are retained in the straw, which itself undergoes a kind of si 
cooking process, and the whole mixture is impregnated w 
