No. 85.J 131 



ture there has mixed the soil Into a rare consistency, which enables 

 t to absorb and retain the atmospheric gases, almost without tillage. 

 I have before stated that barn-yard manure, particularly that which 

 is well saturated with urine, has power to make in the process of com- 

 bustion, or rather fermentation, three times its quantum of manure 

 equivak nt to rotted stable dung. Charcoal, well pulverized, would be^ 

 a valuable agent in the compost heap as an absorbent of ammonia. 

 When sown on the land, charcoal absorbs ammonia from the dew 

 and rain, and only gives it off as needed by the growing plants. 

 Liebig is of opinion that urine is ten times richer in the animal al- 

 kali ammonia, than stable dung ; he says that the urine of a healthy 

 man will make one ounce of the carbonate of ammonia daily. If 

 this is true, which I do not doubt, the excrements of the domestic 

 animals on the face of the earth, contain manuring properties suffi- 

 cient to give perpetual fertility to the whole tilled surface of the 

 inhabited earth. I once, in Rhode Island, heard a farmer say that a 

 single hog would make seven dollars worth of manure in one year ;' 

 his hogs were kept in a tight floored pen, in which all the urine was 

 absorbed by repeated floorings of bog peat, sea weed, or eel grass, 

 straw, weeds, &c. Swamp muck is invaluable in the fermenting 

 compost heap ; its carbonic acid seizes the escaping gases, and the 

 whole mass becomes a quickening, unwasting manure. How often 

 do we hear a farmer boast that he has no waste land on his farm, but 

 an acre or two of swamp ; yet these swamps are the great store- 

 houses of the material of which plants are half composed, to wit : 

 carbon ; these swamps are now considered in New-England as the 

 depots from whence their worn out granitic soil is to receive newness 

 of life. 



In relation to animal manures, Doct. Dana says that the carcase of 

 an animal of 100 lbs. weight, covered up so as to decompose slowly, 

 will convert a cord of swamp muck into a solid cord of ma- 

 nure, equivalent to the manure of the stable. How often do we see 

 the most valuable animal and vegetable manures, and even lime and 

 ashes, lie wasting in the road along side of a field exhausted by reck- 

 less tillage. It is not six months since, I saw leached ashes employ- 

 ed to fill up the ruts and mud holts in a road ; yet chemistry tells us 

 that leached ashes contain alkaline salts which nothino; but a jirow- 

 ing plant can thoroughly extract and assimilate; when I see a far- 

 mer fill the highway with pigeon weed pulled from his wheat field, 

 instead of placing it in his compost heap, there to be sprouted by 

 warmth and destroyed by combustion, I can but invoke the presence 

 of that great analyzer of vegetable physiology, Doct. Sprengel, to 

 show this farmer how much of the elements of new plants he is 

 iosing in thus wasting this weed. The leaves of plants and trees, are 

 the great receivers of carbonic acid from the atmosphere, which 

 they decompose, appropriating the carbon and giving off the oxygen 

 again to replace the carbonic acid in the atmosphere ! It is a wise 

 provision of nature to place her trees, weeds and grasses, where man 

 will not place vegetables. Were it not for weeds, the working of 

 the soil would too often be neglected — yet some farmers are so stupid 



