FAEMERS' INSTITUTES. 295 



Favmyiinl Tnaiuire, properly saved and preserved under cover, is the only 

 complete niauure found, made, or produced anywhere. It is good for any farm 

 crop; it is not over-stimulating; it is lasting in its effects. If it has been 

 allowed to burn up by excessive fermentation, or to be rinsed and washed by 

 rains and dried by the sun and winds, it is poor and wortliless stuff, compared 

 to that which has been rightly kept and treatedk We take a field and we don't 

 know precisely what the soil wants, — we don't know just what it lacks or needs 

 to cause it to produce the largest crop, just the particular things to use to 

 amend it, but we know that if we have a good lot of stable manure we can put 

 that on and be sure of supplying what the soil needs, and that which will pro- 

 duce the largest yield of grain or grass. It is likely that we may add some 

 things which the soil does not need, but there is no danger in that. If we go 

 to the chemist with our soil and take his prescription, and get superphosphate, 

 potash-salts, guano, blood-manure or anything else he may prescribe, what will 

 be the result? Failure, five times in six. This thing of fertilization is not 

 developed in a simple analysis, nor covered by any prescription. The immense, 

 intricate and unceasing forces of nature have something to do with it, — and 

 who can estimate them or calculate their influence? Go the world over for a 

 prescription for a sick soil, but you will not cure it. Apply a few tons of barn- 

 yard manure and you administer a remedy which works with nature's forces. 

 It supplies the food which any plant requires, and a shovelful is better than a 

 thimbleful. It acts mechanically and it acts chemically also — it acts both 

 ways — and that is what no other fertilizer will do. It has all the necessary 

 nitrogenous properties to stimulate the plant, and it acts directly upon the 

 soil and the plant at the same time. A dead, sterile soil feels the effects of 

 stable manure immediately, and is aroused to a condition to produce something 

 this year and next year. You may search the world over and you will find 

 nothing to equal it. You may fertilize the soil with strong nitrogenous man- 

 ures, such as guano — which is an animal manure, I know, but I am not speaking 

 of that class of animal fertilizers, because we cannot employ them profitably in 

 this part of the country — nor do we want to, either — but you apply a ton of 

 such manure, and you get a wonderfully quickened and large growth, but you 

 exhaust the soil. It is like putting a man into a tight workshop and feeding 

 his lungs with pure oxygen gas. He will breathe rapidly and work like a giant, 

 but he is soon exhausted — his strength is used up in a brief time. So it is with 

 a soil which you stimulate excessively with powerful nitrogenous manures. 

 Afterward, it has not the vital power it had before — it seems dead, and clammy, 

 and crusty. These effects are never seen after an application of barnyard fer- 

 tilizers. 



Now I desire to say something about composting the animal manures of the 

 farm. I know I shall be met at the outset with the quieting assurance 

 that composting manures cannot be done here on account of the expense 

 — the high price of labor. This is not a valid objection, it is not a business- 

 like objection; it is a lazy man's excuse and that only. The question to 

 be determined is this : Is composted manure better for farm crops than coarse, 

 unfermented straw and excrement? Any practical farmer, I think, will 

 admit that it is. And, further, I think that farmers will agree with me that 

 a cord of well composted and decomposed manure v\-ill go farther and produce 

 more than two cords of the coarse, indigestible stuff hauled out from the yards. 

 And further than this and more important than all, by composting with muck 

 in the stables the liquid excrement, the richer portion, is almost entirely saved, 



