No. 85.] 89 



tant ; but it will avail little without a fertile soil ; and this fertility 

 must be created, or kept up, by a copious application of manures. 

 For these contribute directly, or assist indirectly, to the supply of 

 nearly all the nourishment which plants receive ; it is these, which, 

 produced chiefly from the decay of dead vegetable and animal matter, 

 combine most powerfully to give new life and vigor ; and thus the 

 apparently putrid mass, is the very material which is converted into 

 the most beautiful forms of nature ; and plants and brilliant flowers 

 spring up from the decay of old forms, and thus a continued succes- 

 sion of destruction and renovation is carried on through an unlimited 

 series of ages. 



Manures possess different degrees of power, partly from their inhc'^ 

 rent richness, and partly from the rapidity with which they throw off 

 their fertilizing ingredients, in assisting the growth of plants. These 

 are given off" by solution in water, and in the form of gas ; the one 

 as liquid manure, which, running down, is absorbed by the fine roots ; 

 and the other as air, escaping mostly into the atmosphere, and lost. 



The great art, then, of saving and manufacturing manure, consists 

 in retaining and applying to the best advantage, these soluble and 

 gaseous portions. Probably more than one-half of all the materials 

 which exist in the country, are lost, totally lost, by not attending to 

 the drainage of stables and farm yards. This could be retained by a 

 copious application of straw ; by littering with sawdust, where saw- 

 mills are near ; and more especially by the frequent coating of yards 

 and stables with dried peat and swamp muck, of which many parts 

 of our State furnish inexhaustible supplies. I say dried peat or muck, 

 because if it is already saturated with water, of which it will often take 

 in five-sixths of its own weight, it cannot absorb the liquid portions 

 of the manure. But if it will absorb five-sixths in water, it will, 

 when dried, absorb five-sixths in liquid manure, and both together 

 form a very enriching material. The practice of many farmers, shows 

 how little they are aware of the hundreds they are every year losing 

 by suff'ering this most valuable of their farm products to escape. In- 

 deed, there are not a few who carefully, and very ingeniously as they 

 suppose, place their barns and cattle yards in such a manner on the 

 sides of hills, that all the drainage from them may pass off" out of the 

 way into the neighboring streams ; and some one mentions a farmer, 

 who, with pre-eminent shrewdness, built his hog pen directly across a 

 stream, that he might at once get the cleanings washed away, and pre- 



