500 
On the Chemistry of Ensilage. 
amides. On distillation with water, some of these amides split 
up, and yield ammonia. However, I find that green fodder, 
such as grass, clover, Italian rye-grass, &c., when simply dis- 
tilled with water, yields an appreciable amount of ammonia in 
the watery distillate, which, 1 take it, arises from a portion of 
the amides, which exist in considerable quantities in all unripe 
green fodder. The presence of amides in silage is thus no 
proof of the reduction of albuminous compounds, upon which 
the nutritive value of all food depends, into amides, which, 
rightly or wrongly, are held to have little or no nutritive value. 
It is quite possible that a portion of the albuminoids in the 
green food in the process of ensilage may be changed into 
amides ; but as green food contains amides in considerable 
proportions, especially when the fodder is rather immature, the 
question of the alleged reduction of albuminous nutritive com- 
pounds into innutritious amides can only be settled by a series 
of careful quantitative analyses of the fresh green food and of 
the silage produced from it. 
In the preceding analyses the total percentage of nitrogen in 
silage was ascertained by combustion with soda-lime, and 
calculated as usual as albuminoids. 
In six samples, however, I determined separately, by Pro- 
fessor Church's phenol process, the nitrogen which actually 
existed in the silage in the form of albuminous compounds, and 
the nitrogen occurring in it in the shape of amides, or similar non- 
albuminous compounds. The following results were obtained : — 
Albuminoid 
Nitrogen. 
Non-Albu- 
njinold 
Nitrogen. 
5. Lord ToUemache's Peckforton grass-silage 
per cent. 
•26 
•30 
•11 
•38 
•24 
■37 
per cent. 
•17 
•29 
•07 
•02 
•07 
•05 
The relations of albuminoid to non-albuminoid nitrogen in 
these six samples, expressed in percentages, are shown on 
page 501. 
It will be seen that the relative proportions of albuminoid and 
non-albuminoid nitrogen in these six samples of silage varied 
greatly ; and it is worthy of special notice that Mr. George Fry's 
" sweet " silage, in which I found merely traces of acid, 95 per 
cent, of the total nitrogen occurred in the form of albuminous 
compounds. 
