All animals are fond of maize, especially horses, pigs, and poultry ; it gives the flesh of the two last a peculiarly fine flavour. The most profitable way to use maize in fattening animals is to grind it into meal, and mix it with warm water into a pottage; and, for horses, to soak it twenty-four hours in water before they are fed with it. In the dry state it is so hard that it wears their teeth, and in young homes is apt to produce blindness by the exertion of the muscles of the jaw in chewing it.
One of the most important uses of maize in Europe is to sow it thick, to be cut green as food for cows, oxen, and sheep. In a proper climate there is no plant which gives so great a mass of green food as maize. The produce is most abundant and nutritive. The largest varieties should be chosen. The seed may be sown In drills in April, and in September a crop might be mown, which would give admirable fodder for every kind of cattle. It is said to exhaust the land ; but what will not exhaust it, more or less, which gives much nourishment f Maize will well repay the manure which may be required to restore the humus it has consinned. If it is sown early, a second crop
may be raised the same year ; for it duos not spring up again, like grin, after being cut. Where the land admits of irrigation, the growth of time maize is most rapid and luxuriant. The time to cut it is when time male flowers are just appearing out of the sheath in which they are enveloped In the early stage of their growth. It may be dried into hay, and will keep good fur a couple of years; but in this state it must be bruised or soaked when given to cattle, as the stems get very hard I in drying; they may however be cut, as the cane-tops are in the sugar ' plantations.
MAJOit (Latin), Greater, in mueie, a term applicable to the imper fect concords, but chiefly to the interval of the 3rd. It is also used to diatinguish the mode which takes a major or sharp 3rd, (rein that having a minor or flat one. The major mode has always a greater 3rd —that is, a 3rd consisting of two tones; and the minor mode has always a minor 3rd—that Is, a 3rd consisting of a tone and a semitone. (Ker ; Mons; THIRD.)