SAVING AND APPLICATION OF MANURES. 53 



manufacture a great deal of valuable manure, if farmers will give 

 their pens proper attention, and supply them with materials to be 

 converted into manure. Sheep and hens both furnish a source of 

 making- manure that should not be overlooked, but is by far too 

 much neglected among farmers. The privy was also alluded to, 

 as the fertilizer it furnished was powerful and active. The muck 

 bed was a great auxiliary to the manure heap, and as an absorbent 

 he regarded muck as better than loam, because it was lighter to 

 handle than loam. Some farmers in his county are hauling muck 

 two miles, and consider themselves well paid for doing so, others 

 do not do so well. In fact wastefulness is the rule, rather than 

 the exception in the matter, and our lean pastures and barren 

 fields attest the too general wastefulness of farmers. If the 

 farmer saves every particle of manure made, he will have small 

 need of commercial fertilizers. A barn cellar was of tl\e greatest 

 importance in saving manure, and those about to build a barn or 

 to improve those they now have, should make provisions for a 

 cellar. 



Mr. Thing said the hog-pen could be made a more profitable 

 source of manure than any other agency upon the farm, provided 

 the contents of the horse stable and privy, together with house 

 and sink slops, with a sufficient quantity of dried muck, were all 

 worked over together. As a dressing for corn, such manure had 

 always been satisfactory. The secret of making manure was to 

 keep constantly at it, doing a little every day, putting in a wheel- 

 barrow load of loam or muck as opportunity occurred, and not 

 waiting to do a great deal at a time. 



Mr. Scamman asked " What can be done to save manures by 

 those who have not cellars to their barns ?" The bedding of 

 horses is an almost universal practice, and where straw cannot 

 be obtained, saw dust and other matei'ials are used. In some 

 cases muck is used. But little is said or done about bedding neat 

 stock ; he believed there was scarcely one farmer in fifty, through- 

 out our State, who uses sufiicient bedding for his neat stock. 

 Bedding was an act of mercy and justice to the animals, and 

 farmers were guilty in compelling them to lie down in their own 

 excrements. Again, a loss occurs in the manure pit. Neat stock 

 should be bedded as much as horses, and the refuse forage, straw, 

 orts, &c., now so often wasted, should be used for this purpose. 

 By this method the cattle are made comfortable, and a large 

 amount of liquid manure is absorbed and saved. He alluded to 



