at Home and Abroad. 
161 
As to the influence of moisture, I have found that crops pitted very wet 
rise to a temperature of about 130° F. wlieu pitted green, but when cut on 
dry mornings they will not reach more than 110° F. As far as my experi- 
ment has gone, I should say pit the crops wet or wettish. If lieavy pressure 
is i)ut on, no vortical cut can admit much air into the stuff, which will 
readily keep good for days and weeks, perhaps more, without turning 
mouldy. My minimum weight is 120 lbs. to the square foot. If, on the 
contrary, you weight your silo lightly, say, 40 lbs. to the foot, or less, you 
will obtain a product which air can easil}-- enter — and spoil. Cittle and 
sheep long for " silage " at the first smell ; bullocks, for instance, will horn 
one another away from a lamp of it, even when plenty of other food, such 
as turnip.-!, be^t, or cake, is in the yard. Many horses, on the contrary, 
regard it with suspicion, and nature evidently does not intend ensilaged grass 
for them as a substitute for hay. I shall, however^ certainly experiment with 
it upon brood mares. — November 1883. 
PS. — Since writing; the a^jove, the silos have been opened in exactly the 
reverse order to the filling. Results : — 
Silo 1. (Maize of September 1883.) Excellent fodder, slightly too acid 
for choice, bat relished by stock. 
Silo 2. (Coarse grass, July 1883.) Good useful fodder, none the better for 
the added salt. 
Silo 3. (Clover, June 1883.) Very strong smelling stuff, but sweet and 
alcoholic, much relished by stock, producing an increased yield of milk and 
butter from the cows, to which it is fed, even in a more remarkable way than 
the two former sorts of silage. 
As a further result of the experiment, I may add that I mean to grow a 
much larger breadth of maize in 1884, and thoroughly to test it as fodder. 
In this neighbourhood it is possible to grow a crop of rye in front of it, then 
to break up your land, dung it, and drill in your maize the first week in .June, 
^vhich date is quite early enough. 
On September 6th, 1883, I inspected Mr. Bateman's silos at 
" The Lodge Farm," Brightlingsea. The details given above 
leave little more to be added, except that it may be useful to 
draw attention to the fact that the green maize, with which I 
saw No. 3 silo filled, is a unique example within my English 
experience of the growth of that crop on a large scale for 
pitting purposes. The crop was good, notwithstanding that a 
large proportion of the seed first sown did not germinate, and 
that a second sowing therefore became necessary. Naturally, 
the plants produced by the latter were stunted, and so the 
weight of fodder per acre was very much less than it would 
have been if all the first-sown grains had germinated. The 
average length of the stalks of the plants which had been 
produced by the earlier-sown grains I estimated at 7 feet, and 
their average diameter about 1^ inch. This is by no means a 
bad result for maize sown in England. A Bentall's chaff-cutter 
was fixed on a raised platform at the side of the silo which 
was being filled, and it chopped the materials into lengths of 
about three-eighths of an inch. The chopped maize fell from the 
<;hafF-cutter direct into one corner of the silo, which naturally 
70L. XX. — S. S. M 
