24 SEPTEMBER 1927, Page 13

I do not .propose—I have not the knowledge—to weigh the

comparative methods of the different crop-driers. It is enough for the moment to, give the results of one of them. Colonel Lyon this year has dried wheat, oats and barley, and several sorts of hay on his machine. Every crop has been carried to the drier with the minimum of delay, ; and in all cases, except the extreme one that I watched in opera- tion, the drying has been complete within thirty-six hours. Colonel Lyon himself compresses and trusses both hay and straw at the first possible moment ; and his milch cows are living on the dried fodder, for which they are greedy. Some of the hay is a short, and very sweet, second cutting from the rough of a golf course. I Iii .re never smelt sweeter hay. Most of it keeps some greenness, t'ilugh bone-dry, and Colonel Lyon nurses the plausible belief that it has qualities which do not usually belong to hay that has beer. weathered. He hopes that it will enable him to reduce his cake-bill by 50 per cent. or perhaps very much more.

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