MODEL FARM AND AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. 183 



highest productiveness, and indicating no diminution, but rather 

 an increase of yield, seems to have satisfactorily established this 

 point. The provisions for saving all the manure, both liquid and 

 solid, for managing the compost heap, and for increasing its 

 quantity by the addition of every species of refuse that can be 

 found, are complete. The stock consists of seventeen cows, one 

 bull, six young stock, two horses, and one pony ; and they are all 

 carefully stall-fed, in clean, well-littered, and well-ventilated 

 stables, with ample space before and behind them, and turned 

 out for recreation, in a yard, about two hours in a day. The 

 manure heap is in the rear of the stables ; is always carefully made 

 up, and kept well covered with soil, or sods, or weeds, so as to 

 prevent evaporation, retain the effluvia, and increase the quan 

 tity. The liquid manure is collected, by spouts, from the stables, 

 into a tank, from which it is, as often as convenient, pumped up. 

 and thrown, by an engine pipe attached to the pump, over the 

 heap ; and that portion of it which is not retained, but passes off, 

 is caught again in another tank, and again returned upon the 

 heap by the same process as before. The skilful manager of the 

 farm prefers this method to that of applying the liquid manure 

 directly from a sprinkling machine upon his fields. Either mode 

 may have its peculiar advantages, which I shall not now discuss. 

 The object of each is to save and to use the whole ; and I am 

 determined, so important do I deem it, never to lose a fair oppor 

 tunity of reminding the farmers that the liquid manure of any 

 animal, if properly saved and applied, is of equal value as the solid 

 portions ; but in most places this is wholly lost. The manure 

 for his crops he prefers to plough in in the autumn ; and the ex 

 traordinary crops of potatoes grown by him are powerful testimo 

 nies in favor of his management. 



His potatoes give an average yield of eighteen tons (gross 

 weight) to an English acre, which, allowing fifty-six pounds to 

 the bushel, would be seven hundred and twenty bushels. He has 

 grown twenty-two tons to an English acre. Either of these quan 

 tities, in New England and in Old England, would be considered 

 a magnificent crop. He plants his potatoes either in ridges thirty 

 inches asunder, with the potatoes or sets eighteen inches apart 

 in the drills, or else in what here is called the lazy-bed fashion, 

 which is a common practice, but which, as it respects the labor 

 required, is altogether misnamed. In this case, the land is dug 



