It is generally thought in those countries where the soiling system is most universally adopted, that it is best to allow the green food to remain twelve or twenty-four hours after it is cut, before it is given to cattle. This may be prudent with cows and oxen, which are apt to eat voraciously, and are subject to be hoven from the fermentation of the green food in the paunch or rumen : but, excepting in the case of young vetches, which are more physic than food, for horses there is little danger ; and if the food is not wet with dew or rain, the fresher it is eaten the better it will nourish the animal, and the more he will relish it.
If any one is desirous of calculating the expense of soiling any number of beasts, he has only to reckon what time of men and horses it will take to cut the food and carry it to the cattle, from the average distance of the fields in which it can be raised in succession. Much of their time is lost in tlie morning and evening in going backwards and forwards from the field to the yard ; for there can scarcely be an establishment so large as to keep them employed a whole day; and if there were, the fields must be so large and so distant, as 4o greatly increase the expense of carriage. Not to enter into minute calcula
tions, it is fully proved, that, to a certain extent, soiling is profitable and economical, when it can be done before and after the usual hours of labour; but that when undertaken on a large scale in any one locality, it is usually attended with loss, the manure produced being purchased at too great a price.
If a labourer who has an allotment of half an acre of good light land would devote it entirely to raise food for a cow, his wife and children cutting the food and tending the cow in a small yard with a shed, or in an airy cow-stall, he would find that he had a much greater clear profit, than if he had sown his land every year with wheat, and had always a good crop, which last supposition is improbable. There would be no better stimulus to industry than to let a piece of land for this purpose to everyman who could purchase a cow and feed it by soiling.
SOL, in music, the name given, in sol-fa-ing, by the English, Italians, and French to the fifth of the scale ; and by the two last also to tho sound called 0 by the Germans and English. [SowarsaTioN.]