686 Utilisation of Straw as Food for Stock. 
pulping the roots and intermixing the pulp in this way with 
straw chaff’. 
This leads naturally to some reference being made to the 
method employed by the late Mr. Samuel Jonas, described in 
the Journal (Vol. VII., 2nd series, 1871, page 85), of carrying 
out on a large scale in a systematic way this intermixing of 
straw chaff with green chaff from clover, grass, vetches, tri- 
folium, or any other green crop convenient to be chaffed and 
intermLxed with straw chaff. The regular practice of Mr. Jonas 
for many years, which was afterwards pursued by his son, Mr. 
F. M. Jonas, was that of attaching a big chaff-cutter to his 
threshing-machine whenever threshing took place, the straw 
passing immediately from the thresher into the chaff-cutter. 
At the same time another smaller chaff-cutter was set in motion 
to cut up green chaff derived from any crop at the time on 
the farm fit for utilisation. The chaff was then carried away 
to be stored in some large barn or other storehouse, and 
trodden down in alternate layers of green chaff and straw chaff, 
salt being abundantly strewn thereon during the process. The 
gi’een chaff' would only be about 1 cwt. to the ton in pi’opor- 
tion to the straw chaff, just sufficient to cause a very salutary 
and effective fermentation, and the food would remain some- 
times a great many weeks, and even months, before being re- 
quired to be used. The chief objection against this seems to be 
that threshing is carried on to a great extent in winter and early 
spring when there are no green crops to be thus utilised ; but 
Mr. F. M. Jonas in carrying out his father’s practice found that 
it answered just as well to mix root pulp with the chaff, and 
when he threshed in winter he was accustomed to do this, making 
the storage in every respect the same except the substitution of 
root pulp for green chaff. 
In fact, Mr. F. M. Jonas had in 1877 entirely abandoned 
green chaff, and substituted mangel-wurzel jmlp instead. In a 
letter published in the Journal (Vol. XIII., 2nd series, 1877), he 
said : — 
On this farm, which consists of 850 acres of arable land, I cut into chaff 
every year 100 acres or more of wheat or oat straw just as described in the 
.Journal ; but 1 use pulped mangel instead of tares, rye, &c., as I can depend 
better on the quantity of moisture contained in it. . . . By using a large 
quantity of chaff for sheep, and folding all my roots on the laud, I can now 
beep one and a half sheep per acre, whereas a few years since, when scarcely 
any straw chaff was given to sheep, and roots were carted off to bullocbs, 
one sheep per acre was enough.” 
Mr. Jonas also mentioned various devices he had successfully 
carried out for cheapening the chaffing process. This had been 
