208 Manuring Grass Lands. 



face soil nor the substrata are of that cohesive character, nor do 

 they contain so much carbonate of lime, as we find under the thin- 

 skinned, heavy land about Crewe, Cliolmondeston, Calveley, parts 

 of Tattenhal], Bolesworth, and Buerton, and other parts of 

 Cheshire, Staffordshire, and North Wales. 



On the better description of strong soils 12 to 15 cwt. of 

 bones per acre has been found quite as much of a dressing at 

 one time as could be safely applied, and several fatalities have 

 occurred to stock feeding on newly bone-dusted land. The 

 change of the quality of the herbage from a very poor feed of 

 poor grass to a full bite of the richest herbage, mostly of the 

 clover or frifolium tribe of plants, has caused cattle to become 

 hoven, as is often the case when turned on rich crops of after- 

 math clover. 



Bones have been used on some grass-lands with less effect ; but 

 failure, or even partial success, has only occurred under peculiar 

 circumstances or natural condition of the land, as, for instance, on 

 lands situate near large towns or thickly-peopled localities, or 

 on such very light sandy soils as rest immediately on ferru- 

 ginous sand : on grass-lands near large towns which have for 

 many years been liberally top-dressed with highly putrescent 

 manures, bones do not show a very decided manurial action. 



In the year 1837 I was in correspondence Avith the late Earl of 

 Leicester, and in reply to an inquiry his lordship wrote me : — 

 " Wishing to try the effect of bone manure on my farm at Holk- 

 ham, I erected a machine for the purpose of preparing bones, but 

 after a trial of three years I found the manure did not answer, 

 although I had seen bones used with great success on the sandy 

 soils in the county of Nottingham." 



An opinion is held by some farmers, that if bone manure is 

 applied to land which has been limed the bones have little or no 

 effect, and that the lime neutralises the fertilising properties of 

 the bone. 



On that question I tried a limited experiment in 1848. I had 

 used several hundred tons of lime in the spring months of that 

 year on very old turf, the soil being sandy and resting on a sub- 

 stratum of sand, but not the fox-bench or iron-band sand. In the 

 autumn of that year I bought 8 tons of raw bones which had been 

 collected in a town, price 8/. per ton. These bones were taken by 

 my own carts direct to a mill to be ground, and were waited for 

 until they Avere ground. In September I applied half a ton of this 

 manure to half an acre of land which had been limed in the spring, 

 at the rate of 8 tons to the acre. The half-acre on which the ex- 

 periment was tried is part of a pasture of 100 acres, and the boned 

 part to this day is superior to the adjoining parts. 



Bone-sawings, such as are made at the button manufactories. 



