52 THE AMERICAN FARMER. 



a woolen or paper mill, or tannery, the waste substances furnished by these are often utilized 

 in the compost heap with good effect. Some farmers put in old woolen rags, old boots and 

 shoes, bones, brine, soap-suds and all the garbage from the kitchen, and old refuse of every 

 bind and description that can be collected together, and which will, in time, become subject 

 to the chemical changes of the compost heap, and produce an excellent fertilizer. 



In the cotton growing states, cotton-seed is often utilized as an important ingredient of 

 the compost pile, after having been fermented with wood-ashes to soften and reduce the 

 hulls. Another layer of muck should follow this, then stable manure and waste material, 

 thus alternating until the pile is made of sufficient size. The manure from the sheep-fold, 

 pig-sty and poultry-house, together with night-soil, all furnish rich material for this purpose, 

 and are thought by most farmers to be more beneficial to various crops when composted in 

 this manner than when applied separately. The compost heap should be composed of about 

 one load of manure to two loads of muck, in proportionate quantity of each, and from twenty- 

 five to thirty pounds of plaster added to each load. It should be built five or six feet high 

 (if not under cover), to prevent the rains from leaching it. The top of the heap should be 

 covered with muck. Some surmount this with boards on straw, as they finish a hay-stack, 

 which is a very good practice. When built under a cover, leaching by the rain is prevented, 

 but it involves the additional labor of keeping the mass wet. The three essentials necessary 

 to produce rapid decomposition in the pile are air, moisture, and a temperature above 65, 

 and these conditions, except in quite cold weather, are generally found in a compost heap. 

 Superphosphate of lime, about two hundred pounds to each cord of material, is considered by 

 many a very valuable addition to the compost pile, also finely ground bone, which is a good 

 substitute for the latter when that material is difficult to obtain. 



Freshly slacked lime hastens decomposition, and thus gets the mass in condition to be 

 used much sooner than it otherwise would be, but its use is objected to by many as having a 

 tendency to set free much of the nitrogen, and thus involving too much loss to be profitably 

 used. Salt in sufficient quantity to give five or six bushels to the acre is also often a valuable 

 acquisition to the pile. Some mix ashes, both leached and unleached, with the compost, 

 while others prefer to apply the ashes to lands separately. 



Alexander Hyde says further respecting composts: &quot;Muck, mixed up with fermenting 

 manure, becomes quickly infected with a tendency to decomposition, the manure acting much 

 like yeast in the housewife s bread-bowl. A little leaven of manure is thus made to leaven 

 the whole lump. When shoddy was not so much in vogue as it is at present, we were accus 

 tomed to use the refuse of a neighboring woolen-mill for composting with muck, and as the 

 wool was generally oily, ready to absorb oxygen from the air rapidly, and thus undergo a 

 spontaneous combustion, we have seen the pile in an almost boiling condition. A yellow oily 

 substance exuded from it, and a stick thrust into the pile, soon became feverishly heated. 

 In contact with such fermentation, muck is rapidly cooked, and made into good plant-food. 



Common barn-yard manure does not ferment so furiously as oily wool-waste, but the 

 effect is similar. A board placed in it rots twice as fast as when in common earth. Even 

 old boots, which, from the tannin in them, resist decay with great pertinacity under ordinary 

 circumstances, placed in the compost heap, become as powerless as Samson with his head 

 shaven, and are as easily torn as so much pasteboard. Horse-manure is more inclined to 

 fermentation than that from cows, and is therefore best adapted to produce this decomposing 

 influence in the compost heap. We have known bones in a pile of horse-manure become so 

 soft that they could easily be crushed. 



We are not prepared to assent to the assertion so often made, that no additional virtue 

 is acquired by manure in the process of composting and fermentation. It might as well be 

 asserted that flour acquired no additional nutriment by composting it with a little yeast and 

 water. In the process of fermentation great chemical changes are going on ; old compounds 

 are destroyed and new ones formed. 



