324 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



understand chemistry in its relation to agriculture, which shoves us that 

 there is no difference between a bullock and a shower of rain, except in 

 organics ; when we comprehend that three-quarters of the weight of our 

 bodies is water, that nine-tenths of our turnips is water, then shall we be- 

 lieve that water is manure. The seeds of weeds are quickly destroyed by 

 saturation in liquid manure ; the maceration of our manure will prevent 

 the increase of weeds. The cost per ton is about one cent, delivered on 

 the land. Although the irrigation with liquid manure has only been in 

 operation for eight months, it is telling, very unmistakably, on the profits 

 of my farm. For instance, a piece of red clover, of eight acres, being an 

 imperfect plant, was condemned to be plowed up early ; but, on the appli- 

 cation of the jet it produced enough to maintain 13 sheep per acre, all the 

 summer, thus setting free my other fields for hay. It has greatly increased 

 my produce of roots, both Swedes and mangold-wurzel. The time is fast 

 approaching when the farmer will receive back, weekly, from our towns 

 and cities, his supplies of food, altered in form but scarcely in value. 

 How reasonable and delightful to trace the bullock of to-day returning this 

 day week, and passing through the jet, to produce on the morrow the food 

 for another bullock." 



There are 260 acres of land one and a half miles southeast of Edin- 

 burgh, which are irrigated with city sewage, and takes fourteen days to 

 irrigate. The produce of the land is sold by auction on the grounds, to 

 the cow feeders of the city, at $155 per acre, between the middle of April 

 and the first of October ; they are shut up and regularly irrigated through 

 the winter. The collective weight of erass cut within those periods is 80 

 tons per acre. The cost of maintaining these meadows, independent of 

 the engine, consists in the employment of two hands to turn on and off the 

 water. There are other similar meadows on the west side of Edinburgh. 



In the immediate vicinity of Glasgow, there is a farm which is supplied 

 with liquid manure from a daii-y of seven hundred cows, attached to a large 

 distillery, the entire drainage from which flows in a full continuous stream 

 into a tank containing forty thousand gallons, whence it is pumped up im- 

 mediately by a 12 horse power engine, into large cisterns placed on the 

 highest points of the land to be irrigated ; from these it descends by gravi- 

 tation, through systems of pipes wherever required, the furthest point , 

 being two miles, and the highest elevation 80 feet above the engine. This 

 is a farm under a nineteen years' lease, and the tenant only uses the liquid 

 and sells his solid manures, amounting to three thousand tons a year, for 

 $1.75 cents per ton. 



Near Maybole, in Ayrshire, there is a farm of four hundred acres be- 

 longing to a gentleman whose name has escaped me, laid down with pipes, 

 through which superphosphate of lime and guano have been transmitted in 

 solution. The water made use of on this farm has to be raised from wells 70 

 feet deep, and four hundred yards from the tanks ; still, the liquid is de- 

 livered on the land at the rate of 4,000 gallons an hour, that being the 

 usual portion allowed here to an acre. At certain points are hydrants to 



