at Home and Abroad. 
129 
it in granaries above ground. The main object, especially 
of nomadic tribes, was to prevent marauders or victorious 
enemies from obtaining possession of their stores. The Spaniards 
learnt the practice from the Moors, and in Spain it gradually ac- 
quired a new importance for a purely commercial object, namely, 
the preservation of corn in times of plenty and low prices until 
times of scarcity and high prices. From the Basque provinces 
it found its way into France, where it had a very severe struggle 
for existence, but where it may now be seen on a large scale, 
at the stables of the Paris Omnibus Company, some silos being 
below ground and some above.* 
In France, the system of ensilage was originally imported 
from Spain with a view to the preservation of cereals from years 
of plenty to years of scarcity. It is recorded by Mons. L. 
Doyere,t that the proprietor of the estate of Palerne, in the Puy 
^e Dome, put his corn harvested in 1820 and 1821 in silos 
constructed for the purpose, and kept the grain in them until 
the end of 1828, when, prices having risen to double their 
figure of seven years before, he opened the silos and found the 
^rain practically uninjured. It is true that a small layer at the 
top, immediately under the straw which separated the grain 
from the hermetically sealed cover, was a little mouldy, and the 
silo contained a quantity of carbonic-acid gas when first opened. 
But the bulk of the grain was perfectly preserved, and the pro- 
prietor of the estate was so satisfied with his success that he 
placed there in 1528, in one of the underground rooms, where it was so well pre- 
served that the bread which was made from it, two centuries after it had been 
placed there, was found very good. There exists now (1804) at Ardres, de- 
partment of the Pas de Calais, one of these underground places made by the 
Romans.' 
" A number of examples might be cited of grain very well preserved in similar 
■underground pits, which ought always to be placed in very dry places, with the 
precaution of cutting off all access to the outer air, by covering the corn with a 
layer of powdered lime slightly moistened. If it be desired to have fuller details 
relative to this way of preserving corn, as also with regard to the stores emp]03'ed 
at the present time successfully for the same object, the article on ' Wiieat ' in 
the ' Course of Agriculture ' by Rozier should be consulted. There are to be found 
the methods of Duhamel, Parmentier, and Bucquet. The work of Barthele'my 
Inthiery should also be consulted. It is entitled ' The Art of preserving Corn.' 
These different works leave nothing to be desired in an object of so great an 
importance, which has also been well treated by M. Cailleau, in a memoir 
inserted in the ' Journal of the Royal Society of Agriculture of Paris,' spring 
quarter, of 1788. It would also bo desirable to refer to the word ' Conservation ' 
in the ' Encyclope'die Me'thodique, Dictionnaire d'Agriculture.' 
(Signed) " T. LAVERRifmE." 
♦ I have inspected some of these silos with my friend, M. Lavalard, the General 
Manager of the Company. A description of them, with an exhaustive dis- 
cussion of the questions involved, will be found in a Report by M. Miintz, 
' Etudes sur la Conservation des Grains,' published in the ' Annules de l lnstitut 
National Agronomique,' No. 4 of 1878-79, publislied in 1881. 
t ' Recherchos sur I'Alucite des Ce're'ales ; ' Paris, 1852, p. 102. 
VOL. XX. — S. S. K 
