half or nine inches apart, and having a stalk as near as may be once in nine inches. Some of those stalks weighed nine pounds apiece.

Mr. TAFT. I asked that question, because I was at a silo in Saxonville, on Mr. Micah Sampson's farm, and in the barn he had thirty-three oxen; and the man who ran the place told me he put them in in November, weighing twentythree or twenty-four hundred to the yoke by actual weight. He kept them in the barn thirteen weeks. They were then sold, and were going the next day to Boston; and he estimated the weight of the oxen - and I think he was not a great ways out-at thirty-eight hundred to the yoke. They were fed on ensilage, and all the corn-meal they would eat. I then asked Mr. Neal, who had charge of it, what was the best material to put in the silo. He said, "The best quality of English hay, just as it is heading out." How much hay he would grow to the acre, I do not know. Of course, there is land that will grow ninety or a hundred bushels of corn to the acre, manured as they manure first-class land on Concord River.

Mr. WARE. I will mention that I put in three acres of heavy rowen that was just heading out.

Mr. TAFT. What would that weigh to the acre?

corn.

Mr. WARE. It would cure probably two tons to the acre when it was green: I don't know how much it would weigh; but I had a very heavy growth, and I mixed it with the My cows eat it all up clean: there is no waste. The three calves are eating ensilage, and they are thriving: they look remarkably well. The pigs are rather young, and I do not feed them on that alone: they have about half of that at the present time. Part of my horses will eat it all up: the other three have not yet arrived at the point where they will eat it as they do hay.

QUESTION. How do you cut your rowen?

I

Mr. WARE. I cut that a little longer than the corn. cut the corn three-eighths of an inch long, or as near that as may be. I alter the machine to cut the rowen, and cut it an inch and a half long.

QUESTION. What kind of corn do you raise?

Mr. WARE. It was Blunt's prolific. I think that is better corn than Southern dent corn, because it inclines to

more size. I had one acre of Southern dent corn, and two acres or a little more of Blunt's prolific.

Mr. RUSSELL. You say you feed horses on ensilage: can

you state how much ensilage you feed to a horse?

Mr. WARE. I feed them forty pounds a day; and those that eat forty pounds a day have a small quantity of hay and grain.

Mr. RUSSELL. What do you mean by a "small quantity of hay"? About how much?

Mr. WARE. I should say five pounds, perhaps.

Mr. RUSSELL. How much grain do you feed each horse? Mr. WARE. I should say two quarts to a meal. And allow me to say that those horses are not race-horses: they are horses I use on my farm. I drive them moderately, but they prick up their ears very nicely since I have given them ensilage. I have a light carriage; and I have felt some little fear, as I belong to the Essex County Agricultural Society, that I might be called to account for driving fast horses.

Mr. RUSSELL. If I fed a horse forty pounds of any nutritious food, five pounds of hay, and six quarts of grain, I should do it solely for the purpose of getting manure.

Mr. WARE. You understand that this ensilage is supposed to contain about seventy or eighty per cent of water?

Mr. RUSSELL. I should say it was entirely useless for nutrition, if a horse could get away with that amount, five pounds of hay, and with two quarts of meal at a feeding. Are your horses at work?

Mr. WARE. Not hard, but steady work.

Mr. RUSSELL. For a horse not at hard work, I call four or five quarts of oats and eight pounds of hay a full ration. QUESTION. How much water does a horse drink in the course of a day?

Mr. RUSSELL. Horses vary. Horses are like men, of them are thirstier than others.

some

Mr. I asked that question because the ensilage that horses eat contains all the water they want.

Mr. RUSSELL. I am sure that Mr. Ware does not have

any trouble about watering his horses. If he gets forty pounds of any sort of food into them, besides that hay and grain, I think he is wasting his ensilage.

Mr. WARE. I said five pounds of hay.. I do not know. how many pounds, but a very small quantity.

Mr. HADWEN. I only rise to put in a little evidence in this case, not growing out of my own experience, but from my observation and reading, and my talks with gentlemen who have tried the silos.

It was my good fortune to meet, in September, a gentleman, who, I might say, stands in the front rank in the silo business; that is, Mr. Mills of New Jersey. He has had six years' experience, and his accounts almost staggered me. I had been on the fence in relation to the silo question, gathering what information I could from all sources; and I have to confess that the preponderance of evidence is in favor of the silo. Mr. Mills informed me that in the year 1880 he fed the product of thirteen acres of land to one hundred and twenty cattle (one hundred being milch cows, and twelve horses) for a period of seven months. I questioned him further in relation to his milk, which he sent to the NewYork market. He informed me that the quality of his milk was improved, and that he obtained a greater price for his milk than was paid for any other milk which went into that market. He now has six silos, and I questioned him somewhat in relation to the construction of these silos. He informed me that a great deal more expense had been put into the silo than was necessary. He said, as Dr. Faxon told us, that the great object was to get pressure upon the top to press out the air from the fodder. He said, furthermore, that a silo should be filled in two days; that, if it could not be filled in two days, a partition should be made in it, and a portion filled; but the work should be completed in two days, and the pressure applied immediately. He applied the pressure in sections. His silos are forty feet long, thirteen feet wide, and twenty feet deep. The fodder is piled fifteen feet high above the silo, so that when it is pressed down the silo will be even full. He informed me that he put on this pressure in sections of plank, each four feet in width; and, when he used the ensilage, he removed the plank, and cut down perpendicularly one section of four feet. He also stated that he weighted these planks with grain: five tons of grain in bags was put on each section of four feet; and when the grain was removed it was ground, and fed with the ensilage. I stated to him. my mode of feeding cows, that I had practised for a good many years, and he replied to me

at once, that I was an extravagant man, and could not afford to do any such thing; and in hearing the testimony here this afternoon, coming from men like Mr. Thompson, and my friend Mr. Ware every word of whose statements I can believe in relation to this matter (and I feel also that I must believe every word that Mr. Mills has said, for he appears to be a gentleman of veracity, and certainly he is a very large breeder, undoubtedly the largest in this country) — in this testimony, we have very strong evidence that a progressive farmer has got to look into the silo question in a candid way. I am rather confirmed in my belief that a silo would be more beneficial where the soil is sandy than where it is a stiff clay, such as we have in some sections of the State. We all know that corn is more easily grown on sandy soils than it is on heavier soils.

There is one other point, and then I stop. Mr. Mills informed me that he had rather come to the conclusion that ten tons of good grass cut at the proper time was of equal value with forty tons of corn ensilaged. That is all I have

to say.

The CHAIRMAN. I should like to ask Mr. Ware if he can tell us how much the hundred tons of fodder that he puts into his silo weighs when it is taken out.

Mr. WARE. I cannot. I did not say I was feeding my cows sixty pounds a day exactly. I do not know how much loss there is; but I cannot conceive what becomes of the loss, for my silo, except on top, is water-tight and air-tight, and this corn-fodder is put in perfectly green. The men are cutting it in the field, the teams are hauling it, and other men are cutting it with machinery to drop it into the silo at the same time. It is put in perfectly green, and there is no escape for any thing, except by evaporation at the top, that I can conceive of, and that must be very slight.

The CHAIRMAN. Shall you know, when you have fed it out, whether you have fed out one hundred tons, or what you have fed out?

Mr. WARE. I don't know that I can tell.

QUESTION. Can you tell to what density you press it?

Mr. WARE. Sixty pounds to the cubic foot. I did not weigh it in: I simply estimated as to the weight of the crop.

QUESTION. How do you consider it compares with corn taken right from the field, and fed, in value?

Mr. WARE. I have fed corn-fodder a great many years green from the field. I have never fed corn-fodder so mature as this that I have put in the silo, and I have never kept my cows entirely on corn-fodder; but as a matter of opinion, without any exact knowledge, I think that the corn that I put in as ensilage is of more value as feeding-material than what I have been in the habit of feeding in its earlier stages. My cows are doing remarkably well on ensilage alone. They always did well before on green corn-fodder, with the addition of some other food. I never fed it entirely alone. Simply as a matter of judgment, I think they never did better than they are doing now on the ensilage.

Recess until half-past seven P.M.

EVENING SESSION.

The meeting was called to order at half-past seven o'clock by Dr. WAKEFIELD, who introduced as the lecturer Hon. PAUL A. CHADBOURNE, ex-president of Williams College.

THE FARMER'S HOME OF THE PAST AND FUTURE.

BY HON. PAUL A. CHADBOURNE.

It is useless to try to escape work in this world, unless we are willing to neglect duty, and shut ourselves out from those men who are blessing the world by increasing its products, its knowledge, and its goodness. Four years ago I insisted upon resigning my place on the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, because I could not find time to do my duty. It was true, I had worked years for nothing, and on that account might, perhaps, have claimed freedom from work, while reaping the honor of the place; but holding that a man is to do what he undertakes to do as well as he can, whether paid for the work or not, I resigned, and gave my place to abler hands with more leisure for the duties of the Board. But here I am to-night in my old place, by invitation of the honorable secretary; and I accepted his invitation because I have one thing more, at least, that I wished to say to the farmers of our State on one subject which I wished to present to them for their future consideration.