AT HANGMAN'S WOOD, GRAYS.
269
Grain pits or silos are common in Europe now, and abound in all
countries which border the Mediterranean and Black Seas, including
Sicily, Malta, and the Islands generally. These countries have
retained the usage from times earlier than history reports. Wheat
millet, maize, rice, and other corn are alike stored in pits, while
beans occasionally are so buried. Wine and oil have an equal share
of subterranean hoarding, the silo in the latter case being generally of
the better sort.
Spain in particular, as being the country nearest to Britain where
the silo is in full use, is worthy of our first notice.
In the troublous times of the first French Revolution, and the wars
of the first Napoleon, the storing of grain had become a matter of very
serious consideration in all towns, especially when ricks and stacks
were found more dangerous than useful; and men began to look
about for safe and suitable modes of preserving grain for long and
indefinite periods as well as short ones. M. Jourdain, finding the
subject in agitation, brought his experience in Spain to the assistance
of the State, and was the first to call the attention of the public in
France to this mode of storing grain beneath the soil. He appears
to have written several accounts, but in 1815 he minutely described
the how, why, when, and where of the whole practice of "Ensilage
des Grains," a word which was first employed by a translation of
the Spanish phrase. The word silo is Spanish, and M. Jourdain
also created the words ensiler and descnsiler.17
M. Jourdain's paper is exceedingly useful for the minuteness with
which he describes every detail, and by the addition of a long cate-
chism of questions and answers, with a descriptive plate ; a method
which, while it tells us that the use of silos had gone out of fashion,
was also the surest mode of teaching the whole matter to those
amongst whom it was desired to re-introduce it.
M. Le Comte de Lasteyrie also called public attention to the
storing of grain beneath the soil, and in sundry publications he not
only propounded a modification of a silo suitable to the wants of the
day, but he based its recommendation on the success of a custom,
Thanet Sand, it is impossible to dig it beneath the surface, so that a roof may be achieved and a
permanent cave formed. Consequently all such strata must be perforated until the more manage-
able chalk is reached. When there is a layer of tufa, as in Northern France, or other hard
material, as in the remarkable layer covering the surface in parts of Morocco, excavation is easy,
and shafts are rendered unnecessary. By far the larger number of grain pits are sunk without
distinct shafts. Thus the use of shafts is a matter of geological conditions only, and they are, if
anything, detrimental to the digging of deep caves for the purpose of holding grain, inasmuch as
the difficulty of construction and access is greatly increased. It may be suggested that when a
suitable rock was reached by a deep shaft, it was found of great advantage to dig a very large
cave beneath one shaft, rather than to dig many small caves, each with a single shaft.
17 The word silo is from the Greek siros, and the equally Spanish word sitia is also Greek.