382 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



be equivalent to the same thing. What is needed in manure is 

 something that supplies all which is required ; gives an active, 

 vigorous, healthy growth, and at the same time yields the food 

 which it wants to complete and fill out all its tissues. 



Mr. Martin Moores, of Bangor, was called upon and said : I 

 will not take up much of your time. This is a wide field, and much 

 might be said ; for three j^ears, commencing in 1849, I gave some 

 attention to this subject and made up my mind decidedly that more 

 might be made in farming by knowledge than had been made by 

 labor, and I wanted to get along in an easier way. I took Mapes' 

 "Working Farmer," from the first number, during three years. I 

 read Dr. Johnson's "Agricultural Chemistry;", if that could have 

 been abridged one half, I should have liked it better. I had also 

 " Bommer's Method," ahd from that something was to be learned. 

 I think I have learned enough from Johnson and others to under- 

 stand what has been advanced here, and, so far as I know it is all 

 true. You have had the science of agriculture; now the great 

 thing is to have the practice. 



In regard to this question of manures, it is the barn yard, to 

 which we must always look for our main supply. The decomposed 

 rejections of what the animal eats furnishes the general manure ; 

 and where that can be supplied to the soil, with the addition of 

 any special manure that may be wanted, we shall realize greater 

 benefit even than has been represented here. When your farm is 

 in balance, a general manure is exactly what you want. But if 

 some of the elements which are absolutely necessary to produce a 

 given crop are deficient, it cannot yield its maximum product un- 

 less those elements are furnished in sufficient quantity. Whenever 

 phosphate, or potash, or nitrogen is wanted, we need mercantile 

 manures in addition to what is furnished by our animals. 



I experimented a good deal during three years. Following out 

 Bommer's method, my first object was to increase the amount of 

 manure. These commercial manures must not be the main depen- 

 dence of the farm. We cannot expect to make three hundred acres 

 rich by buying manures ; we must depend mainly upon the barn- 

 yard, and by attending to it understandingly, we can furnish them 

 in our composts, as I have practised. In one instance, following 

 out the Bommer method of fermentation, I decomposed six horses, 

 with other things, in six weeks, or all but the hair and bone ; and 

 I actually decomposed the bone in the course of one or two years. 



There is one point which I wish everybody understood, and 



