INCREASING THE MANURE-HEAP. 291 



darkness, and a pestilence that wasteth at noonday. Let all 

 decomposing substances be removed from the house-cellar 

 to the barn-cellar, the subtle poison arrested, and held in 

 durance vile, till its properties deleterious to animal -life can 

 be converted into an essential element of plant-life. 



And, while the scavenger is around collecting garbage, let 

 him remember the bones and the ashes. This refuse of every 

 family contains ingredients which will produce a phosphate 

 that no chemist can excel : the one contains phosphoric acid, 

 and the other potash. Let the large bones be broken with a 

 sledge, deposited in an old hogshead, with alternate layers of 

 ashes and bones, and occasionally a little water poured on 

 the mass: after a few months, if dissolved in dilute sul- 

 phuric acid for a few days, you will generate a fertilizer that 

 will go a long way towards supplying, not merely the farmer, 

 but any family, with garden vegetables, rendered sweeter 

 from the fact that he not only raised them with his own 

 hands, but also manufactured the fertilizer in his own labora- 

 tory. 



Too often the farmer neglects his garden because he thinks 

 he has not the time to devote to this secondary business, and 

 cannot spare the manure from his more important crops. 

 Let him improve his leisure moments some rainy day in this 

 chemical process, and some leisure evening let him enter 

 into a little mathematical calculation of the value of the 

 products of a good, well-cultivated garden, draw a compari- 

 son between the value of these luxuries and the small cost of 

 the manure which produced them ; and he will spare time 

 from his other pressing calls sufficient to make his garden 

 " bud and blossom as the rose," making a thing of beauty a 

 joy forever, ancj to make his better-half and joint partner, who 

 is toiling with him for the common interest, more smiling, 

 more captivating, than in days of yore, when he led her to 

 the hymeneal altar, and will reconcile him to his extra efforts 

 when he sees at how small a price his table can be loaded 

 with the luxuries of the garden, and at the same time the 

 family made more joyous, and the home more happy. 



Having secured and collected the weeds, the leaves, the 

 potato-tops, the corn-butts, the sawdust, the loam, the sand, 

 and the muck, then comes the question, How shall they be 

 disposed of? The leaves, sawdust, and dry earth will per- 



