188 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



from tiie wind — see how mucli sooner a wet blanket dries in the wind than 

 in a calm — should always be under cover. Practically, the best arrange- 

 ment was to make one end of the floor of the heap a little lower than the 

 other, and at the lower corner to sink a hogshead. Into this hogshead put 

 a chain pump. Every week, every day if you prefer, pump back the liquor 

 upon the heap. If it has no fluid to drain oS", put water into the hogshead 

 and pump it on the heap. No fear of adding too much unless the hogshead 

 overflows. The heat within and the moisture will not allow anything in 

 the heap to escape decomposition, and very speedily the whole interior will 

 be homogeneous. Turning it over with a fork is nothing to this turning 

 over that chemistry is eflFccting for you. Into the hogshead turn the slops 

 of the house ; on to the heap turn all waste stuff, leaves, muck, straw, night 

 soil, it will all be worked up. The drainage into the hogshead is the most 

 valuable manure, to be applied directly to the land, if you choose. But 

 every time it goes through the heap it secures a new change, and improves 

 the character of the whole. If you want to hurry up the mass for use, 

 pour into the hogshead hot water and pump that on. Such a heap does 

 not deteriorate in quantity, either, as a common, unwetted muck heap does ; 

 a plenty of water will prevent its burning. If your soil is especially defi- 

 cient in any one clement, put that into the hogshead and put it on to the 

 heap, and your whole field will get it. 



Benjamin Pike, of Jersey, said there was a special benefit arising out of 

 Prof. Mapes' mode, and that is the moisture and heat causes the weed 

 seeds to swell so as to be killed. I find this in a tank of twelve feet deep 

 and twelve feet wide, into which I cause all the liquor of my manure to 

 run, and the seeds of the weeds go in, full to the bottom and there be 

 destroyed. 



Prof. Mapes said he would discharge a man who spread manure in the 

 morning upon a field that he did not mean to plow till afternoon. Yet 

 some insist that spreading the manure in the fall on fields to be plowed 

 next spring, brought good crops. So they do, but the greater part of the 

 good got out of the manure was the mulch that its long litter furnished ; 

 and long litter was too valuable to be used for such purpose, when thatch, 

 or even shavings, would answer just as well. The manure, to be of ser- 

 vice to the next crop, must be finely divided. Composting it, in the man- 

 ner above stated, did this ; plowing it under of course could not. Putting 

 soil on the manure heap did good, but only so far as the soil acted as a 

 divisor to the manure. 



For the next meeting, Mr. Olcott proposed " The National Value of the 

 Chinese Sugar-Cane." Not an agricultural paper turns up that does not 

 report at least one experiment in its neighborhood with this imported cane. 

 Very extensively, this year, the farmers are raising this article — and in the 

 ■west, successfully. Here, added Prof. Mapes, it cannot be very much 

 raised for sugar — it wants a longer season than our climate permits — 

 though so much as can be manufactured within two or three weeks, the 

 New York State farmers can profitably raise and manufacture into molasses. 



