122 PRIZE ESSAY : 



answers these requirements. Charcoal not only absorbs ammonia 

 to an immense extent, but it also oxidizes it to nitric acid, and 

 thus renders it temporarily inert, but not unavailable to future 

 fertilization. 



219. Powdered charcoal is distributed with the utmost ease 

 over large areas. Being an extremely light substance and easily 

 reduced to a fine state of division, the least breath of air is suffi- 

 cient to carry it for hundreds of yards. Any one who tries the 

 experiment of gently shaking a muslin bag, containing coarsely 

 powdered charcoal, in a gentle wind, will find that the operation 

 of sowing, as we may technically express it, a ten acre field, 

 would certainly not cost one-tenth part of the labour of sowing 

 the same field with plaster ; and as that operation is not unfre- 

 quent in this couxitry, a practical guide is at once furnished of 

 the amovmt of labour the operation involves. Powdered char- 

 coal thus sown is very uniformly distributed by the least motion 

 of air, and its effects are marvellous. In a stable, for example, 

 strongly smelling of ammonia from fermenting urine, an ounce 

 of powdered charcoal, shaken by means of a muslin bag or any 

 fine network, rapidly and uniformly distributes itself, and in- 

 stantly absorbs the ammoniacal vapours. A curious instance of 

 the action of this deodorizer occurred at Balaclava during the 

 heat of summer, when the stench was almost intolerable in that 

 painfully celebrated harbour. A ship load of charcoal arrived, 

 packed in bags, and the men who were engaged in transferring 

 the cargo to the shore were covered \\dth the dust, as was every 

 object in the neighbourhood — the stench which before prevailed 

 suddenly and completely disappeared. 



220. Nothing is more simple than the manufacture of char- 

 coal — a few billets of wood are to be piled like cordwood, then 

 well covered with sods, with the exception of two orifices, one 

 to admit a little fire, and the other to allow the smoke to escape. 



