mass is one solid substance. It has a ring to it. If you go into the barn and speak when the door is open, it sounds like a drum. I weight it with plank, and then I put on about 16,000 pounds of stone, or about 100 pounds to the square foot. I thought that was insufficient, and last year I loaded it heavier with stone and cord wood. I aimed to put on two cords of stone on a surface of ten by sixteen feet. Where it was tramped heavily, the ensilage was perfect. The man I had, left it soft at the edges and there it was not perfect. My experience has been very satisfactory. I know if I had fed fodder I would not have one pound of fodder by the first day of January, but now I know I shall feed past the 15th day of March, all things being favorable.

Prof. Henry Mr. Charles Lindsey, of La Crosse county, one of our careful, particular farmers, who has his farm accommodations as very few farmers can afford to build them, is present. He has been feeding from the silo, and I would like to hear what he thinks about it.

Mr. Charles Lindsey - I have built a silo. This last summer is the first time that I have experimented. I had seen and heard so much of it that I thought I would build one. My experience so far has not been at all satisfactory. I do not suppose that I have had time to learn all the merits and demerits of it. I have only completed one-half of the silo. I built the silo twenty by sixty feet, including the outside walls, and twenty feet deep. I have three division walls, making four compartments. The walls are two feet thick, laid in with cement, quarry-lime, stone and plaster inside, with two coats of cement. I have only completed two compartments, but it is all under roof. I planted about six or seven acres, and with that I filled two of those compartments level full at the time I was done cutting, but they have settled down to about fifteen feet. I believe the estimates they make would give me about 140 or 150 tons in those silos. I am perfectly satisfied that no such quantity as forty and fifty and eighty and ninety tons can be grown on an acre, because my land is naturally a very rich, black loam and has lots of manure, as I keep lots of stock. It is heavily manured, and my fodder grew heavier because it all lodged down. I said to my neighbors, I would rather plant fourteen

acres and have an easier time in cutting it than to have it so heavy. It was quite a hard job to get it. I think I had from twenty to twenty-five tons to the acre, and I think about that, or a little over, is all that can be grown on an acre. Some of the stalks were fourteen and fifteen feet high, and it laid in every direction, as heavy as a mat on the ground, most of it, and then bundled up in bunches; so I think that is the limit that can be grown, twenty-five tons to the acre. I had to cut it by hand with a corn-hook. When I put it in I had ten or eleven men at work. It took me three days to fill one of those silos.

I run a six or eight horse engine on my place to grind my feed and do all that kind of work. I have used it for running my feed-cutter, and it took me three days with ten or eleven men. I used three teams in hauling and three men in cutting the stuff up, one to help load, one to feed the cutter, and one man in the silo and one to run the engine. I guess I used ten or eleven men. I do not know how they worked it out in, the field for I was not always with them. As they loaded I found it practicable to haul it right in and take it right off the wagon, let the team wait and run it through the feed-cutter, but I could hardly get enough with that force of men to keep the feed-cutter running. I had more capacity in the feed-cutter than I had in the force of men bringing the fodder up. It would have been a great benefit if I had had more men. On account of the fodder being lodged they could not cut it down as fast as they could haul it, so I had to send the men out about an hour and a half beforehand to let them cut it. They brought the stalks in in a kind of a wilted condition, which I think is not the way it ought to be. I think they ought to be put in the silo in as green and juicy and sappy a condition as possible. I think from what I have learned that it would be better to fill the silo inside of two days than three days; but the size of the silo would not allow me to do it. It took three days to fill one of them. My silo was not weighed down as it ought to have been. I met with an accident by losing my balance when walking on the stone wall and had to jump down twenty feet and bruised my ankle, and my hired hands had to attend to the business and did not do it completely. In

stead of putting on two feet of stone as I told them to, they only put on half that amount. I was afraid when I opened that silo I would find a pretty hard mess of stuff, because I knew it was not done as it ought to have been. I opened my silo about the 15th or 20th of November. I was astonished when I took off the planks to find that there was not a quarter of an inch decayed. It was under the planks just as good as ten feet below. I did not find the ensilage in the condition that one member did, and when he was speaking it came to my mind what the cause of the failure must be. I think he tramped his ensilage too much, so that a part of it was pressed more and it did not get an even pressure. He pressed it heavily in the center and left the outside unpressed. I have seen in some agricultural paper a remark that it would not do to press the ensilage too much. I find it will settle with its own weight. When it gets through the heating process its own weight will settle it. I do not think it is necessary to tramp it at all.

In filling my silo I shall just spread it out and let it settle itself, and that will give it an equal pressure and there will be no unequal quality to the ensilage. I have not seen any ensilage but my own, and I had a different opinion of ensilage before I saw mine. Whether it can be bettered or not I cannot say; I would like to find ont. My ensilage is just as good close to the wall as it is inside. It smells a little like fresh lime as it was plastered only a week before. The cement was dry and hard, but it has a little different smell, and I thought the walls might have given it that smell, but I cannot find any difference in the quality. I had an idea that it would be better lower down, but I do not see any difference. As far as keeping is concerned everything is all right. My neighbors felt quite tickled when I was putting in that. They said I would have a nice lot of manure, that I would have enough to cover my farm, and all that kind of remarks. I laughed and said it would be my loss, I liked to experiment a little, that it was for their benefit; if it was a failure they would keep their hands out of it, and if it was a success they would all go to work at it and have the benefit of it. I find that it will not rot any more than a pile of straw, but whether it can be kept from more or less souring

I do not know. I think the less it will turn into this vinegar souring the better it is. My cows will eat it; still I think my ensilage is a little more sour than I would like to have it. A Member-How ripe was the stalk when you cut it? Mr. Lindsey—It was just forming-once in a while a stalk. Where you grow corn so thick it will not form any ears; but once in a while, where it was a little thinner, some of the stalks would produce small ears. It was just turning into milk when I cut it. My calculation was to cut it a little earlier, but I did not get my silo complete.

Mr. J. M. Smith - Did you take the whole top off when you opened it?

Mr. Lindsey - The first silo I opened and fed, I only took off two planks at a time. I found it quite a job to keep cutting down that solid mass, so the next section I took three planks and the next section I took off four planks, and now in the second silo I took off one-third of it, and I do not believe it will injure it at all. I laid it out for ten days in my stable, and it does not seem to change it much.

Mr. Sloan- What do you think of its feeding value as compared with hay?

Mr. Lindsey - I cannot tell yet. I am not settled as to its feeding value. I am running a small creamery and making butter for about thirty cows, but I cannot say that my cows have largely increased in the quantity of milk, but my feeding as I used to feed my cows is a little different. I have been feeding all chopped clover hay mixed with more or less oat straw and steamed slop right with it, all they wanted to eat, but I guess I did not feed quite as heavy of meal and stuff this winter as I did before. I feed a bushel basket full of ensilage in the morning, and after they get pretty near done eating it I give them about ten quarts of meal made into slop. I cook it. I feed a good deal of what they call mill screenings. I can buy these screenings from our elevators and mills pretty cheap, and my farm is not so large. I have only two hundred acres, and keep fifty head of cattle or more, and generally over one hundred swine, and horses. It is not possible to raise on that space all my small grain, so I buy mill screenings mostly and what is called pigeon grass or wild millet, and once in a while I get hold

of some buckwheat, and flax screenings with a little flax seed in it. The reason that I am in favor of steaming is that these grass seeds are very nutritious but very hard to digest, and by cooking them they will be digested perfectly. A Member Will the cows eat the ensilage?

Mr. Lindsey - They will eat it slick and clean. They do not seem to care much for hay either.

Mr. Ford-How do you make the quantity of tons of ensilage you got on that ground?

Mr. Lindsey - The estimate is forty to forty-five pounds of solid ensilage to the square foot. By measuring my silo it would come to a certain number of tons, and by measuring the number of acres I get at the number of tons per acre.

Mr. Ford-Can you tell how much in weight a cow will eat in a day?

Mr. Lindsey - A bushel basket in the morning and another in the evening. I never weighed a basket.

Mr. Ford-How many cows are you feeding?
Mr. Lindsey

About thirty milch cows, and the balance are yearlings and two-year-olds; about fifty head.

Mr. Ford - How many tons do you estimate they have eaten so far?

Mr. Lindsey - About eighty or ninety tons so far according to my estimate.

Mr. Ford

About two tons a head?

Mr. Lindsey - Not quite.

THE AMERICAN FARMER.

BY PROF. W. J. BURBANK, Lake Mills.

There is no class of men in our whole land more influential and powerful than the farmers. Ours is essentially an agricultural country, with every variety of soil and climate, and the men who till that soil, causing it to bring forth the wealth which makes the nation rich and the people prosperous, are a power in the land whose influence for good or evil must be and will be felt throughout its borders. Being so, it becomes you like men to learn how that influence and power can be