Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/230

220 In 1870 M. Vilmorn called the attention of French farmers to the advantages of this method of preserving green fodder, which M. Reihlen had then successfully practiced for many years. The new method was so favorably received and extensively introduced in France, that it soon became known as the French system of ensilage. The application to a new crop of the old system of curing grass as "brown or sour hay" was in fact accepted as a practically new method, which was designated as the "ensilage of maize."

M. Morel seems to have been the pioneer in the practice of the new system, the results of his experience having been published in the "Journal d'Agriculture pratique" of October 19, 1871. Others, encouraged by this report, followed his example, and for several years the "ensilage of maize" was the leading topic of discussion in the agricultural papers of France. In 1877 M. Auguste Goffart published, in Paris, a work on ensilage, giving his experience for several years with silos of masonry above ground, in which the covers of boards were loaded to give a continuous pressure to the mass, and thus exclude the air. The covering and weighting of the silo, as practiced by M. Goffart, was an improvement on former methods, and it appears to be the only point on which he can make a claim of originality. A translation of this work, which has been the standard authority on ensilage, was published in New York in 1878, and had a marked influence on the introduction of the system in this country.

As early as 1873 agricultural papers in Great Britain and America gave occasional brief notices of the preservation of green fodder in pits as practiced in France and Germany, and the process was usually referred to as the "potting" or "pitting" of fodder.

In 1875 three earth-silos were filled with fodder-corn and broom-corn seed, under my direction, in Illinois, with results that were quite satisfactory. These experiments were reported in "The Country Gentleman" in 1876, page 627, together with an account of the experience of several French farmers who had used ensilage on a large scale. In this paper the French terms "silo" and "ensilage" were introduced, as they had a definite meaning not well expressed by any English words, and they are now in common use.

Mr. Francis Morris, of Maryland, who has had the credit of making the first experiments with ensilage in this country, made his first silo in 1876. Others soon followed his example, and now we find silos in every part of the country, and ensilage has become a familiar cattle-food. The first silos, as we have seen, were simple pits dug in the ground, and the soil thrown out was used to cover and protect the ensilage. In many soils these pits served but a temporary purpose; and the next step in their development was a lining of masonry to give the pits a permanent character. From the difficulty of keeping the water out of these pits, in many localities, silos of masonry were made above ground, and these at first were massive and expensive.