130 [Senate 



pressed down and covered up Avilh straw In the barn-yard to pre- 

 vent fermentation there, that it should be hauled out on to the land in- 

 tended to be manured, as early in the spring as possible ; if it cannot 

 be plowed under before it ferments, it should be fermented in heaps 

 covered up with swamp muck, or even the surrounding earth, if time 

 cannot be had to procure other matter ; just air enough should be 

 admitted to the manure, to promote fermentation, but none of its gas- 

 es should be allowed to escape through the earthy covering. David 

 Thomas has advised that a thin coat of lime, or plaster, should be 

 thrown on the top of the earth which covers the fermenting dung 9 

 but that, in no case, should caustic lime be mixed with barn-yard 

 manure ; when the lime has become carbonated by being sometime 

 mixed with loam, or muck, it may then be safely mixed with the com- 

 post. Lime in the hydrate state spoils animal manures, urine and 

 stable dunsf, althoug-h it is useful in that state to reduce and render 

 soluble the fibre of such undecomposed matter, as peat bog, leaves, 

 straw, chip dung, &c. &c. Lime is also useful, to decompose the in- 

 ert vegetable matter in the soil ; when soils fail to produce wheat, 

 our farmers suppose that their vegetable matter is exhausted; this is a 

 great mistake ; it is only ^the alkalies that are wanting, and the me- 

 talic bases. These alkalies dissolve the vegetable matter in the soil, 

 and fit it for the food of plants ; they attract the ammonia and car- 

 bonic gas, from nature's great storehouse, the atmosphere, and pre- 

 vent their escape, giving them off slowly as food to the growing 

 crop. 



It is also necessary to ameliorate the mechanical structure of heavy 

 tenacious soils, by plowing in long manure, or green crops ; thus ren- 

 dering the soil porous and capable of absorption. I often hear a 

 farmer say, of a particular lot, that it has been cropped until it is 

 heavy and dead ; in this state the ammonia deposited by the dew and 

 rain on the surface, is immediately taken back again into the atmos- 

 phere, by the first sunshine or dry wind ; thus many soils are accu- 

 sed of sterility when nothing is wanting to them, but a mechanical 

 change from heavy and dead, to light and porous ; as it is in this 

 state alone that the soil can receive and distribute the atmospheric 

 gases. 



Go into your garden in the morning and examine a bed, that was 

 raked the previous evening ; it will be wet with dew, induced by ca- 

 pillary attraction — then look at a bed which has not been raked since 

 the last shower ; it will be found crusted over and dry, or much dryer 

 than the new bed. A little manure, vvith thorough mixing and good 

 tillage, is better than much manure badly distributed, the working of 

 the soil and its mechanical structure, being no less important than its 

 chemical fertility — in fact a heavy application of manure badly mix- 

 ed, often injures the crop. When I hear a farmer say that from the 

 best manured field he ever planted, he got but 50 or 60 bushels of 

 corn to the acre, I have replied, had you planted closer, cut out the 

 barren stalks and suckers, and worked and hoed it more and earlier, 

 the product might have been doubled. The secret why river bottoms 

 produce better than uplands, is resolved into the simple jfac?, that na- 



