in contact with. Fifth, the more complete exposure to the atmosphere when granular than when packed, disposes of any taints or foreign odors or flavors more speedily and completely than could be done if the curd were in a compact form. It has the single disadvantage of cooling the curd faster, which, in cool weather, is of some account.

Some special provision has to be made for keeping the curd warm in the cool weather of spring and fall, especially where the make rooms are open, as they often are. For such occasions I have resorted to constructing a temporary sink in one or more of the make vats, by supporting a slotted rack ten inches from the bottom of the vat, the rack being made in sections convenient to handle and covered with a cloth. The curd of an adjacent vat with plenty of whey is dipped onto the rack, the whey all dropping quickly below into the vat, where it remains under the curd. The curd being elevated is convenient to stir, and whenever desirable the whey below it can be warmed to about 120°, when heat enough will rise to the curd to keep it warm as desired, by proper stirring.

Coloring and pressing I omit, as they require nothing different from other processes.

SALTING.

When the curd has become properly digested, ripened, or cheesed, which. ever you prefer to call it, salt is applied according to the time desired for maturing. In spring and fall, when rapid curing is desired, two to two and one-half pounds of salt for each 1,000 pounds of milk are used. In mid-summer, from two and three-fourths to three pounds will be required to carry the cheese safely through the hot weather. I have generally used a little more salt than in the old process, especially when I followed the Cheddar mode, but I am not sure than it is required when the curd is kept fine.

By following out this process as described, several important advantages are secured over the common way of souring in the whey, or of packing in the vat and seeking for acid in ripening the curd after it is separated from the whey, while there is no excellence in either of the other modes which is not as easily attained in this. Any degree of firmness, or softness, or early maturity, or long keeping, or variety of flavor, can be secured as well and with more certainty than by the old modes. The maker is relieved from a deal of anxiety about the condition of his milk. If it is from animals in fair health, and is clean and sweet, he has little to fear from anything else. By keeping his curds fine and warm and sweet, and well drained and stirred, he can, with a little experience, bring them to an almost perfectly uniform condition and secure even results, though the milk from which they were derived was quite unlike.

ENSILAGE.

A PAPER READ BEFORE THE AMERICAN DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION.

BY J. B. BROWN.

Any improvement in the methods by which the nutritive power of vegation can be prolonged, is of greater importance to the farmer who produces it and to the nation that consumes it than any increase of production. Population in time adjusts itself to the average production of the land, but preservation of crops mitigates the alternation of low prices and high prices, and insures regular food for animals and men, thereby increasing the energy and happiness of the commonwealth. The country that does not possess methods and ample facilities for storing food is subject to famines, without regard to the average prolificness of the soil. In England, in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, there occurred a famine once in fourteen years. A crop which can be produced with most certainty, and preserved indefinitely with like expense, either for human or bovine substance, is the best security against death or irregularity in the supply of food. There is no crop that can be so safely reckoned upon by farmers as the stalks of cereals, and now we have arrived at a method whereby they can be indefinitely preserved in a condition that is not only nutrive and healthy, but attractive to the taste of all grazing animals, and at the same time it is a method of preservation that is certain and economical. By means of this process the number of cattle that can be supported upon any farm can be greatly increased, as the yield of nutritive matter in the stalks of cereals is greater than that in the stalks of the grasses that can be grown upon the same space.

The comparative value of these vegetables will become a matter for discussion, but I have no doubt that it can be easily proven to be twenty times greater. The farmers of Orange county require six acres for summer and winter support of one cow by hay and grazing, of which seventwelfths is fed in dry state. Twenty-five tons of green corn-stalks will support in better average condition two cows for a year, with sixty-eitht pounds per day. But it is not difficult to double this quantity of stalks

per acre.

One-half the manure derived from feeding green fodder, carefully preserved, will keep up the land. A mature or fattening animal removes none of the constituents of its food that are valuable for manure. Therefore the most fertile farms of the Eastern States are, as a rule, those that are devoted to stock or dairy farming. Cattle are not only the distributing reservoirs of vegetation, but they also may be made to increase the sources of supply. English agriculture became successful and profitable through stock farming.

If there is one fact recognized by all agriculturists, it is that a certain. quantity of grass, which, consumed in a green state, represents an ascertained nutritive value, loses a considerable portion of that value in passing into the state of hay, intended for the winter sustenance of animals. The cow, which gives us in summer, while feeding on green grass, such excellent milk, and butter of such agreeable color and flavor, furnishes us in winter, when she eats the same grass converted into hay, an inferior quality of milk, and pale, insipid butter. What modification has this grass undergone in changing to hay? These modifications are numerous. It is sufficient to cross a meadow at the time when the newmown grass is undergoing desiccation in order to recognize that it is losing an enormous quantity of its substance that exhales in the air in agreeable odors, but which, if they remained in the plant, would serve as a condiment, facilitating digestion and assimilation.

Ensilage means to pack down in a pit or bank called a silo. These are economical words and were transplanted from the French for the purpose of economy of language, and not, as one agricultural jonrnal put it, for the purpose of mistifying the subject. The common sense of the nation goes in that direction, of concise expression. We have in New York a new kind of railroad which we call for short L, and write it with one letter.

The subject of preserving fodder in a green state interested a French farmer, Monsier Auguste Goffart, as early as 1850, and after that time it became his favorite occupation. In 1852 he built four underground silos with masonry, and for twenty-two years he filled and emptied those silos without prolonging the preservation more than one month. In 1873 he first had a real success. Having a large crop, 200 tons, of green maize in October, he went resolutely to work, in opposition to his employes and foreman, who said that it was all foolishness, and by the means that I will describe he preserved that maize until it was all eaten in March or later, and this was the first practical use of ensilage in the winter that I know of. In this wild coutry, the wildest part of France, so wild that wild boars are one of the plagues of it and sometimes damage the wheat,

dried cornstalks were not considered as fit food for cattle. It the rich and productive Eastern States of America that still discuss that question. And here is the amazing thing about ensilage, that so simple and easy a process, far less complex than falling over a wheelbarrow, should have escaped this shrewd investgator for twenty-two years. No doubt many farmers in this country have an idea, especially since the canning process has become so popular, that vegetation might be preserved in a similar way. Some have gone so far as to pack some green stuff in barrels by way of experiment; some have piled stalks in heaps and covered with dirt. When the heat and moisture of the season have favored vegitation and produced larger crops than could be consumed before frost destroys it, many a farmer has doubtless revolved the problem in his mind.

Apple pomace, turnips, cabbage, and different kinds of leaves seasoned with celery, grape leaves, leaves of beets, beets themselves, pulp of beets beets from sugar factories, some of these have been preserved in pits from time immemorial in Europe for feeding cows and goats. Necessity has so long compelled the efforts of human beings that we may find precedents in almost every line of improvement. But all experienced men who know the great difference that separates a happy suggestion, or even a successful attempt, from a practice well enough confirmed to become the base of a regular business, will admit that these proceedings do not destroy the merit of any man who, like Monsieur Auguste Goffart, has accomplished a continued success. In 1876 the French Government rewarded him with the prize so dear to every Frenchman, the Decoration of the Legion of Honor.

Another astonishing thing about ensilage is that having become a profitable agricultural method in France, and successfully used for five years, it should still be considered experimental in this country. In the agricultural paper of largest circulation in this country, of January last, is an article from the best known of American agriculturists. It is an answer to a farmer of Michigan who writes for advice. He says, "I have twenty acres of clover to plow under. I want to put in wheat next fall. How would it do to drill in corn for fodder previously?" The celebrated agriculturist, and deservedly celebrated, replies: "It cannot be cured or removed from the land in time for wheat." He continues, "some time ago I made a few stacks of corn fodder to see how it would keep. I cannot recommend the plan. We never had a dryer or hotter or better time to cure corn fodder than the past fall. Nicer fodder I never saw. It was as dry as we could ever hope to get it. But I conclude that the

only way to preserve corn fodder is to make it into large, well-shaped

stacks in the field where it grew, and draw it in as wanted during the winter." So, I suppose, this farmer let his field lie idle under the topical summer sun of Michigan, and did not raise corn fodder. This I take it was at least the average state of the art of farming in respect to preserving corn fodder in America in January, 1879, six years after Monsieur Augusta Goffart had fed his green fodder in a green state all winter, and three years after the French government had decorated him for his grand discovery.

M. Goffart called the attention of his brother farmers and of the agr cultural press of France, to his discovery before he had made a complete success, and one of the editors at Paris, M. Lecruteux, was so impressed by it, after having visited M. Goffart, even at that period, that he endeavored to appropriate the credit of the discovery. He therefore wrote articles for his journal with illustrations of pits in the soil and heaps upon the soil, and directed partial drying in the field and mixture with straw, and spoke of the steaming mass and preservation by fermentation. These premature articles cost the French farmers who followed them much loss.

It is from this journal, and with these ideas, that the first articles. printed on this subject in this country were copied. They went out to the public with the high endorsement of Cornell University, and such pits not being adapted to the different kinds of soil in this country would have doubtless caused some loss and delay to the farmers, but for M. Goffart's manual which was soon after published in this country, and supplied to the different agricultural papers.

It is indeed a simple matter, but it requires certain conditions, in the absence of which the results will not be entirely satisfactory. A New York agricultural journal stated editorially: "All there is about it is to bury it as you do celery or cabbages." Well, it is not much more than that, but it is very different from that. The three conditions are entire exclusion of air, entire exclusion of water, and as little change as possible of temperature. A great mass of green, juicy fodder, buried in a pit in soil or masonry, according to all ordinary experience, seems 80 sure to putrify that it almost makes the proprietor nervous at his first opening, but in a few years it will be found so uniform and safe a process that it will become as natural and life like as a dry hay mow.

Maize for ensilage should be drilled or planted in rows. That which is sown broad cast does not contain so much sugar as that which has more air and sun. It should be cut when it is in tassel, before it forms ears, and when it is the most juicy. If for any reason the cutting is deferred until the grain is partly formed, and a part of the leaves wither,