384 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



some places all manure dropped in vaults, and streets, and roads is carefully 

 husbanded. In France the night-soil of the cities is collected and manufac- 

 tured into poudrette, the manufacturers putting in a case or earth closet called 

 a tinette. Near Paris they were forced by pure sanitary reasons to get rid of 

 the sewerage, and a large number of acres is now devoted to valuable market 

 gardens that was once a poor sandy waste, and on which nothing grew. The 

 city was glad to give the sewerage away and build large engineering works to 

 carry it to the place of distribution. The increase in acreage is from sixteen 

 acres in 18G9 to 314 acres in 1875. The amount distributed in 1874 was 8,000,- 

 000 tons, and there was an incref.se of acreage of 1875 over 1874 of nearly ten 

 per cent., which would give about 9,000,000 tons used in 1875. The prolits 

 where this is used are immense. M. Tholomier took some old quarry ground 

 measuring three and one-half acres and paid £G rental, or about $28, and 

 received an annual produce that exceeded £100, or about $800. M. Jolliclere 

 took twenty acres of ground that had been abandoned on account of its barren 

 sandy nature, and from this land has raised twenty tons of carrots per acre ; 

 red beets for salad, thirty-five tons ; cabbages, thirty tons. M. Boismal raised 

 on such lands in 1874 fifty tons of mangolds and thirty -two bushels of wheat, 

 fifty-six bushels of oats per acre. In China, where such a large joopulation is 

 supported, the utmost care is taken of everything manurial in its nature, and 

 all is carefully used to help hold the fertility of the soil. And it is only by such 

 a rigid, economical saving and use of their manurial agents that they are enabled 

 to support sach a population. Many of these circumstances do not surround 

 us in this country and in our vicinities, but we cannot tell how far in the future 

 is the time when we may be in their circumstances, with large cities, large farm- 

 ing population, depicted soils and no more new lands of any value to open up into 

 new farms. Of what use is it for us to read the history of other nations unless 

 we avoid the shoals and breakers on which they have stranded. How much 

 easier for us to keep our soils in a comparative state of fertility than to make 

 them so after they have become sterile and barren by reckless cropping. The 

 comparative few in the neighborhood of cities may succeed in keeping up their 

 lands from the manure obtained in the cities, but the many cannot do in this 

 way, and the best and only true method is to raise stock and be very careful to 

 save all the manure. Each one should keep all the stock he possibly can, not 

 for the direct profit of the stock alone, hut for the indirect profit to the farm 

 in the production of manure. In the production of stock we are liable to all 

 the ups and downs of a grain market, but we should be prepared to follow such a 

 system of mixed husbandry as shall give a farmer some cattle, some sheep, some 

 swine, a small quantity of poultry, and as great a variety of grain crops as the 

 seasons and soil of his locality will allow. Then if grains bear a low price he 

 will not be dependent on any one thing for his year's success. The farmer 

 should feed as many of his products on the farm as possible. It is much easier 

 to market 1,000 bushels of corn in beef and pork than to sell and market the 

 grain, and then there is the manure left, which very few farmers take into 

 account in making up their balance sheet on that particular transaction. The 

 value of manure fed to fattening stock is worth from one-third to one-half more 

 than that of animals in ordinary keep. 



It may be interesting to know some results of experiment in regard to the 

 feeding of stock, both in regard to the amount of feed consumed and the ma- 

 nure made from it. The experiments, — six in number, — were performed at 

 Woburn Park Farm in England, and by those eminent English experimenters. 



