v MANURES 77 
manure does lose some of its valuable constituents 
by rotting so far, especially if exposed to the wash 
of heavy showers; if the solid be preferred to the 
liquid, it should be protected from rain, and yet 
kept just damp enough to decompose thoroughly, 
and turned of course, as every labourer knows how, 
to prevent too rapid heating. 
If a top-dressing be used, no confusion must be 
made between this and a mulch. It is not un- 
common to find, in instructions on planting, one to 
the effect that when a job is done a coating of long 
manure, which may be forked in at spring time, 
should be laid on the top to protect the roots from 
the frost. In the first place it is the plant itself, 
not the roots, which most requires protection from 
frost; next I do not know how any manure, much 
less long stuff, is to be ‘‘ forked”’ into the soil in a 
useful and harmless manner; and I wonder quite 
as much what good can be done by long straw, 
washed clean by the winter’s snow and rains, if it 
is got in. A manure and a mulch are two different 
things, and should not be confounded ; the former 
is for feeding and fertilising objects, and the latter 
for protection against frost, heat, or drought. 
Some little good may be washed out of it into 
the soil, but when wanted no longer it should be 
removed. 
Well, then, shall we apply our solid manure, for 
food during the spring and early summer, as a top- 
dressing? If we do, it is plain that the roots can 
only feed on what is washed from it through the 
soil by rain or watering, and that the same advantage 
could be got by liquid manure alone. To this it 
might be answered that a long drizzling yet thorough 
