EXPERIMENT WITH POUDRETTE. 189 



watched the result carefully. I am sorry to say, I put noth- 

 ing but sand on the land : it was perfectly useless in every 

 sense of the word. I compared it with the night-soil that I 

 bought from the man who cleans the vaults in Boston ; and 

 I tried it as a top-dressing on grass and with hoed crops. I 

 had three barrels left over ; and, when the spring of the fol- 

 lo-wing year came, I told the men to haul it out, and throw 

 it an^^where to get it out of the way : it was perfectly use- 

 less. They rolled the barrels out ; and I told them to knock 

 their heads in, and put the material anywhere in the road. 

 Afterwards I wrote a short article for " The Ploughman," and 

 condemned the poudrette in such a way, that it set every- 

 body laughing. The article got into the hands of the manu- 

 facturers in New York; and they threatened to sue me. 

 Well, I didn't like to be sued : so I took the letter in to my 

 friend Charles A. Welch, of the firm of Sohier and Welch. 

 Mr. Welch read the letter, laughed, and said, " Keep your- 

 self perfectly easy : they will never trouble you ; they are 

 trying to frighten you." Well, as Mr. Welch said, they 

 never did trouble me ; and I have continued to advise every- 

 body to let it alone as a thing of no value whatever. 



But I have used the common night-soil brought from the 

 city, which I have prepared with great care. I have in- 

 variably mixed it with either loam or muck, well pulverized, 

 and exposed to the atmosphere for one or two years before I 

 used it as an absorbent for night-soil. I prepared a basin 

 for the night-soil, and threw this in, and threw a good coat- 

 ing of plaster over it ; then I turned it over twice before I 

 tried its temperature. I usually put stakes into the pile in 

 various places to find when it was fermented ; and whenever 

 I found, by placing a thermometer in the pile, that the tem- 

 perature rose over seventy-five degrees, Fahrenheit, I imme- 

 diately spread out the pile, and added more of the raw 

 material, such as muck and peat, to prevent the escape of 

 the gases. At the same time, I always threw quite a large 

 quantity of plaster over the pile to prevent any escape of 

 the ammonia. I have had great success in using niglit-soil 

 prepared in that way upon various crops ; and I deem it one 

 of the most valuable manures we have ; but I do not ap- 

 prove of using it in a raw state ; I want to have it always 

 carefully fermented before I use it. 



