236 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



five or six inches, and this is strown with leaves, straw, and any 

 thing that will answer for bedding. These materials, as fast as 

 they become saturated and mixed with solid and liquid manure, 

 are thrown, through the stable window, into my hog yard ; and, 

 here, they are subjected to a continual mixing process by the 

 swine, with fresh muck, horse-manure, ashes, plaster, old brine, 

 &c., which are thrown into the hog pen, from time to time. 



In the absence of a barn cellar, or sheds, this method, accord- 

 ing to my experience, creates three times as much manure, as 

 the common practice of allowing the excrements of cows to 

 remain in the open barnyard, exposed to the wasting influences 

 of the sun, air and rain. The liquid manure, which is supposed 

 by good judges to be equal, in a given time, to the solid manure, 

 is saved. The solid manure, being mixed with muck and other 

 fertilizing substances, retains its own good qualities without waste. 



I have never discovered any injury to my cows from keeping 

 them stabled, during the warm season. They have a free cir- 

 culation of air. "With two cows, three hogs and a horse, I 

 estimate that I make, between the first of April and December, 

 forty cart-loads of good manure ; worth one dollar per load, at 

 a cost which I think does not exceed fifty cents per load. I 

 make no account, however, of the muck, except the expense of 

 digging it in the autumn, and sledding it home in the winter, 

 for the reason that, by cutting wide and deep ditches, through 

 the principal springs, I have, within four years, drained nearly 

 two acres of swamp land, that were formerly covered with water, 

 and now are sufficiently dry for the plough. 



Sunderland, 1856. 



Statement of Alfred Montague. 



Guano. — I wish to call attention to a few careful experiments, 

 made the past season. The first tends to prove the value of 

 guano, as compared with the first quality of hog manure, on cold 

 land in corn. On such land, I ploughed in a fair coat of ma- 

 nure from the yard, then furrowed it, having previously made 

 it fine by the use of the harrow and bush. On one-half of this 

 piece, I put hog manure in the furrow, at tlie rate of twelve 

 loads to the acre. On the other half, I put 150 lbs. of guano to 



