QQ BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Should the farmers of Maine make dairying and grazing as prom- 

 inent branches of their husbandry as seems warranted by their 

 facilities compared with those of others, some application which 

 would restore phosphates to the soil might be the only form of 

 manuring to which they would be obliged to give special attention, 

 for the abundance of barnyard manure, if properly cared for, would 

 yield in sufficient quantity all the other elements needful to bring 

 their farms to a high state of fertility — phosphates, which enter so 

 largely into the composition of bones, and of milk, being carried off and 

 not returned. The manure from grown animals (not giving milk) 

 contains considerable, but that from young cattle, (rapidly forming 

 bone) and milch cows, very little. Bone manure is applied with 

 great success to pastures used for milch cows, and which are thus 

 more rapidly deprived of their phosphates than when fed by other 

 animals. Prof, Johnston states that in every forty gallons of milk 

 there is at least one pound of bone earth. Estimating a cow to give 

 seven hundred and fifty gallons of milk per annum, it will require 

 nineteen pounds of phosphate of lime, equal to about thirty pounds 

 of bone-dust ; and in the calf sold, there may be a farther loss of 

 twenty pounds of bone.* 



"The extent to which animals grown and fed upon a farm, draw 

 upon the phosphoric acid contained in the crops upon one hundred 

 acres of arable land, has been calculated by Mr., Hayward to amount 

 to four hundred and thirteen pounds, equivalent to the amount supplied 

 by one thausand four hundred and ninety-one pounds of bones. "f 

 Thus it is seen that even where animal products alone are sold from 

 the farm, and all the manure arising from the home consumption of 

 the crops is retained, there is still a heavy draft upon the phosphates 

 in the soil. 



The use of bones as a manure has been increasing in Great Britain 

 for many years, and such is the estimate in which they are held, that 

 not only is their collection at home a regular and important branch 

 of trade, but large quantities are annually imported from other 



* A writer in the Edinburgh Review states the amount of phosphate taken away 

 in the milk of a cow annually, to be as much as is yielded by eighty two pounds of 

 bone-dust. 



t JMr. Ilayward's calculation was probably based upon crops considerably larger 

 than the average of ours. 



