474 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



used in my own boxes, in each of which I find, 

 after six months' fatting, 8 tons of dung, 6 tons 8 

 cwts. of which are derived from the ox, and 1 ton 

 12 cwt. from the litter. About 24 lbs. per head are 

 used in the covered yards, which are occasionally 

 treated to a dose from the stable-tank. 



" Fifty head of beast, fattened in covered yards, 

 will produce in six months — Tons. 



" Voided by the animals 325 



Litter (24 lbs. per head daily) . 100 nearly. 



425 

 425 tons of dung, fit to plough into the ground at 

 once. 



"The same stock in open yards will prodifce — 

 " Voided by the animals .... 325 



Litter (48 lbs. daily) 200 



Water ? 



525 

 525 tons of mixture, to be carted to a heap and 

 fermented. This is exclusive of a great weight of 

 water. 



" In six months' fatting of fifty head of cattle, in 

 covered yards, the amount of straw saved is there- 

 fore 100 tons; worth, at Mr. Horsfall's estimate, 

 35s. per ton, to convert into butter and beef! 



" I conclude this part of the subject by observ- 

 ing, that the proper use of straw as litter is, to 

 provide a comfortable bed, and to absorb the ex- 

 crements of the stock. These conditions can only 

 be fully seciu-ed when the bed on which the animals 

 lie is covered." 



Having thus glanced at the ordinary sources of 

 impoverishment to which our farms are exposed, 

 next let us trace the restoratives to that steady 

 withdrawal from our lands of fertilizing matters. 

 In the general way we have the minute proportions 

 of ammonia, which descend over our fields in 

 every shower of rain. Then we have, in return for 

 tbe matters which through our land-drains are 

 finally lost in the sea, the enormous products of 

 our fisheries, large amounts of sea- weed, shell, 

 sand, &c. Then, again, Gome two hundred thou- 

 sand tons of guano are yearly restored to the land 

 by the sea birds of the Pacific. If we turn our 

 attention to special applications, then we must re- 

 member the large amount of carbon absorbed from 

 the atmosphere by certain green crops, the 200,000 

 tons of superphosphate of lime, for which the whole 

 world is explored for bones, and those of antedilu- 

 vian animals exhumed by thousands of tons in every 

 realm, in coprolites, and the 13,000 tons of cubic 

 petre of Chili ; and if we add to these the annual 

 imports of corn of all kinds (12,000,000 quarters), 

 the oil-cake of the Baltic and of Southern coimtries 

 (in 1859 95,000 tons), the tea (75,000,000 lbs.), 

 sugar (9,000,000 cwts.), coffee (65,000,000 lbs.), 

 and other enormous vegetable yearly imports — a 

 large proportion of which, in some way or other, 

 tend to fertilize our lands— we may then fairly 

 conclude that the soils of our island are certainly 

 not decreasing in their general amount of organic 

 matters, or of phosphate of lime. 



The increased application of artificial dressings 

 IS, in fact, one of the modern agricultural signs 



well worthy of our attention. Here, again, the 

 northern districts of our island ever appear to take 

 the lead. The use of crushed bones commenced 

 amongst the shrewd Yorkshire farmers. North 

 Lincolnshire soon adopted the practice ; and all 

 Scotland now uses these and other artificial dress- 

 ings to an extent which might surprise some of 

 our Southern agriculturists. And if we examine 

 the reason on which their costly outlays of money 

 for these manures are based, we find it in the re- 

 ports of some of their able farmers' clubs for a 

 series of years. Take, for instance, those of the 

 Annandale Club. We find them eight years since 

 telling their brother- farmers {Trans. High. Soc, 

 1852, p. 243), that on one farm in Annandale, 

 along with equal quantities of dung, eleven bushels 

 of dissolved bones, costing £1 18s. 6d. per Scotch 

 acre, were compared with two cwt. of guano and six 

 bushels of dissolved bones at an expense of £2 Is. 

 per acre, and the first yielded the best crop of 

 turnips. And, in conclusion, that the club were 

 of opinion that 32s. per imperial acre may be pro- 

 fitably expended on extra manures when fifteen 

 cubic yards of dung only can be applied ; and in 

 their next report for 1S53 [ibid, 1853, p. 541) they 

 deem the wisdom of this practice to be "more 

 and more clearly ascertained." And, again, on a 

 more recent occasion, they add, in reporting a large 

 series of trials by the different members of this 

 valuable association — {ibid, 1856, p. 231)— that the 

 greatest crops of swedes were produced where 

 bones, raw and dissolved, as well as guano, were 

 added to the dung, and that the members deem it 

 beyond doubt that the additional expense of 25s. 

 per imperial acre for raw bones, or 15s. for dis- 

 solved bones, will produce an additional quantity of 

 turnips at a very low rate per ton, besides adding 

 much to the permanent condition of the land. In 

 a prior report of Mr. A. Simpson, of Seawig {ibid, 

 I860, p. 195), he advocates the annual outlay for 

 manures of 23s. an acre ; and Dr. Anderson has 

 recently calculated {ibid, p. 460), that, taking the 

 cultivated lands of our islands to amount to 

 24,000,000 acres, that then the average value of 

 the artificial dressings now annually employed is 

 only about three-and-sixpence per acre. 



if, then, it is true that far more artificial dressings 

 can be generally applied to the soils of our country 

 than they have hitherto received, how refreshing, 

 how important is the conclusion ! It shows us that 

 the observation which has been sometimes made, 

 that scarcely any well-cultivated country ought to 

 fail in supporting its inhabitants, is an assertion 

 much nearer the truth than we are always willing 

 to believe. A retrospective glance at what the use 

 of oilcake and other improved artificial dressings 

 have already done in increasing the produce of the 

 broad lands of England, should fairly prompt us to 

 hope for still greater advances. 



It would indeed be an absurd conclusion, if we 

 were convinced that artificial manures can yield 

 our excellent agriculturists no farther profitable 

 results. Those great farmers did not thus reason, 

 when, at the beginning of the present century, 

 they found bones carting away as useless rubbish, 

 when guano was known only to the Peruvian cul- 

 tivatore, and when superphosphate of lime was 



