No. 85.] 129 



that we make to the soil that we crop so closely ; and when yoti com- 

 plain of poor returns for your labor, at least in the quantity gathered, 

 it is upon the principle that you are willing to work your horse but 

 not to feed him. Until, therefore, we feed with a more liberal hand, 

 we shall not be more liberally rewarded. If I compare our farming, 

 however, with what it was twenty years ago, I see a decided improve- 

 ment; better houses, better barns, better fences, better — that is cl eaner — 

 fields, better crops, and stock essentially improved. With all these, 

 man improves. But there is a vast deal yet to be done, and we must 

 not talk of good farming until we can in all things double, and in 

 many treble our present product ; for let me tell you the productive 

 powers of the earth are almost illimitable." 



SENECA COUNTY-MR. WILLIAMS' ESSAY. 



Extracts from the Essay on Manures, read before the Seneca 

 County Agricultural Society, by Samuel Williams, of Waterloo. 

 The practical farmer will of course make the distinction, in using 

 peat and swamp muck, between that which is saturated with water, 

 and that which is well dried ; as the purer kinds absorb more than 

 five-sixths of their weight of water, they are consequently unfitted 

 until dried, at least to a considerable extent, for the absorption of the 

 valuable and enriching juices of manure, which so often are allowed 

 to waste without a mixture of peat, muck, straw, or other absorbing 

 substances: 



The two great principles to be impressed on the mind of the far- 

 mer, who wishes to avail himself of the aid of science in his call- 

 ing, are, first : that urine, stable manure, and all animal manures, fer- 

 ment ; in the process of which they will convert three times their 

 own weight of other substances, into manure equivalent to stable 

 manure itself. Secondly, that the more intimately the manure is 

 mixed with the soil, the better, as in the first place it acts mechani- 

 cally to open the soil and let in atmospheric gases ; in the second 

 place it dissolves quicker ; and until dissolved, all vegetable physio- 

 logists agree that manure can have no chemical, or organic effect, 

 upon growing plants. The same with plaster — until plaster is dis- 

 solved, it can produce no effect, hence the importance of sowing plas- 

 ter early, even before the snow of winter is gone. 



From the first principle, the farmer will see how much he looses 

 by permitting the manure of his barn-yard to waste itself by fer- 

 mentation in the open air. Some agricultural chemists have advised 

 that ground plaster should be strewed over the stables and the barn- 

 yard in order that its lime and sulphuric^ acid might seize and retain 

 the ammonia which escapes during the fermentation of the manure, 

 but the best authority decides that swamp muck, bog peat, or even 

 common loam, is better than plaster ; that the manure should be 



[Senate, No. 85.] I 



