358 



EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



In many cases, I have found provision for saving the liquid 

 manure of the stables in a tank or cistern, from which it is either 

 returned to the heap, or carried to the fields in a watering cart, 

 I have already described a prominent example of this kind. The 

 barn manure here is always carried to the side of the field on 

 which it is to be used, and there it is formed into a long heap, in 

 the neatest manner, and frequently covered with earth, so as to 

 protect it from the weather. I have, in no case, seen long 

 manure applied green from the stables. It is not, however, 

 deemed best to keep it too long, or to reduce it to a very fine 

 muck, by which its strength would be exhausted ; but it is 

 always shovelled over once or twice, that it may be in a con 

 dition easy for distribution. The quantity to be applied to an 

 acre is subject to no fixed rule. The land, as I have described, 

 is well dressed once in a four years rotation, besides the con 

 sumption of one of the crops by folding, and perhaps of another 

 by grazing. 



Of the various artificial manures, which are manufactured and 

 usually patented, I shall give no opinion. Any of the advertise 

 ments in the papers of the venders of quack medicines, if only 

 the name of the article be changed, would serve for the adver 

 tisement of most of the new patent manures, they being adapted 

 to all cases, and certain to cure all diseases. The adulteration 

 of manures is carried on to an enormous extent. No man pur 

 chasing a valuable manure one year is certain to find it the same 

 the next. An eminent professor of geology stated, at a public 

 agricultural meeting, that much guano sold was mixed with 

 ninety per cent, of foreign materials. Saltpetre is full charged 

 with common salt ; and large amounts of guano, in several of the 

 principal markets, have been manufactured entirely out of home 

 materials. This is not an agreeable picture of the morals of 

 trade, nor should it be inferred that this is a general character : 

 but in so large a commercial country as this, with appetites 

 whetted by gain to the highest degree of voracity, it is not sur 

 prising that all kinds of villany should be practised. 



1. GUANO. Guano still maintains its reputation. No new 

 facts have transpired respecting it. but old ones have been con 

 firmed. It continues to be applied, at the rate of two hundred 

 and even four hundred weight per acre, to various crops, with 



