502 
On the Chemistry of Ensilage. 
experiments have been made in England, and no reliable data 
have been obtained from which the degree of loss may be cal- 
culated. That the loss is greater in making sour than sweet 
silage, can hardly be doubted. In the preparation of sweet 
silage, active fermentation does not take place, and in conse- 
quence the sugar and other fermentable constituents of green 
food are subject to much less change and suffer less loss than 
when the silage is allowed to pass through a prolonged series of 
fermentative processes, during which the sugar and other carbo- 
hydrates in the green food are broken up and their elements 
re-united into new combinations, which are partly gaseous, and 
pass away altogether. 
In Germany, however. Professor H. Weiske, of the Experi- 
mental Agricultural Station of Proskau, as long ago as 1873, made 
a number of comparative quantitative analyses of green fodder- 
crops, and the silage produced from them, from which this accu- 
rate observer concludes that, in consequence of prolonged fermen- 
tation, green food in the process of ensilage is converted into 
sour silage at the expense of a considerable amount of the dry 
substance of such food, which passes off mainly in the shape of 
carbonic acid. The loss thus incurred, according to Professor 
Weiske, in an ensilage experiment with sainfoin amounted to 
28 per cent, of the dry substance of the food. He found that the 
loss was not confined merely to the sugar and carbo-hydrates, but 
extended also to the albuminous compounds, and even to the 
woody fibre. The loss in each of these per 100 parts was : — 
Albuminous compounds 16 -3 
Assimilable carbo-hydrates 39 • 2 
Crude fibre .. 21-2 
Similar results were obtained by Professor J. Moser in his 
ensilage experiments on green maize, and quite recently by 
Professor M. Maercker in experiments which he made for the 
purpose of determining the changes which beet-root pulp under- 
goes when pitted. In this case the loss by fermentation and 
gaseous disappearance amounted to nearly 50 per cent, of the 
dry substance. The experiments of A. Mayer and L. Brockema 
also confirmed the foregoing observations, and showed that 
green fodder when undergoing ensilage sustains a very con- 
siderable loss. 
Professor Weiske and B. Schulze were Lately engaged in 
extending their former experiments, and published in the 
'Journal fiir Landwirthschaft,' Band xxxii. Heft i. 1884, edited 
by Professors Henneberg and Drechsler, of Gottingen, an inte- 
resting report on the changes and losses which take place in 
green fodder when converted into sour silage. 
Without entering into a detailed account of their experiments, 
