A NOVEL WAY OF SAVING GRASS.

Patea Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 988, 24 January 1883, Page 3

A NOVEL WAY OF SAVING GRASS.

Many of onr readers flatter themselves they know something about farming, bat they have yet to be taught the best way of saving grass and other green crops. There is a beautiful simplicity in it, remarks a contemporary. Cnt your grass, Italian rye, lucerne, vetches, or whatever it is, bring it home immediately, cut it at once in the smallest bits you can (a quarter of a inch, sayy throw it into a hole, stamp upon it, lay weights upon if, bury it, keep out the air, and, in a few mouths, you will be able to cnt it like cheese, and your cattle will like it and thrive upon it. The hole is called a silo, and the fodder thus prepared is called ensilage, This has been the practice for a long time at a farm a little on this side of Paris. The Vicomte Arthur de Chczelles put the produce of 170 acres into one pit, and cuts it out for his cattle as it is wanted. They enjoy it, and according to their respective destinations, fatten or give milk upon it admirably. In the United States, where an immense quantity of

fodder is wasted in summer, to be svfinted in winter, they are losing no (i i.e The Agricultural Department at W a shim: ton has obtained an exhaustive an 1 very satisfactory report on the results of the experiments already made in many quarters and under various conditions. The process is so unpromising to English ideas that one could not help expecting a few failures, but there appear to be none. The deposit ferments, as it is intended to do, and becomes hotter than the land can well bear it, but there is not a word about firing, while the spoiling, if any, is very inconsiderable. The advantage of the process is that it is a ready and certain way of saving green crops now periodically, one may say, sacrificed altogether in this wet and uncertain climate of ours. Not to speak of the now almost endless variety of green food, sown, cut and gathered for cattle, our pastures are the glory of this isle,' and no small part of its wealth. Yet it is impossible to look at a meadow, especially as it lies now, within the reach of inundation, without remembering that every now and then it is drowned from above or from below, and represents the ruin of the industrious people, who have done all that man could do to fertilise it, and to collect its increase, in vain. The discovery, for discovery it is in fact, and, to English intelligence, comes in the very nick of time to place onr dairies, onr grazing farms, and our stables on a more satisfactory footing. It really is something not to depend on the haystack, which, in spite of its homely and solid look, is a deceitful and fickle thing, quite beyond calculation, sometimes shrunk up, sometimes burnt black, sometimes a woody mass with all the strength and flavor washed out of it. There is hope in the u silo,” unEnglish as it sounds, and we trust it will immediately receive a full and fair trial.— Mataura Ensign.