MANURES. 531 



who buy according to their means or necessities. It is sold by 

 the barrel or tun, and is measured by the scale in the tank, or 

 the vessel in which it is removed. Sometimes the cisterns are 

 covered in with brick, arched, and emptied by means of a pump ; 

 in other cases they are emptied by means of dippers and buckets ; 

 and it is important that they should be accessible, so that the 

 sediment may be removed as it may collect. Sometimes the 

 cistern is a mere round well sunk in the ground, and emptied by 

 a pump. But the form is of little importance, provided it be 

 secure and convenient, compared with the matter of saving all 

 this refuse, the importance of which I have already most urgently 

 insisted upon. To the great credit as well as to the great gain 

 of the Flemish farmers, nothing of this kind is ever wasted ; 

 and the cleanliness of the Dutch towns and cities is certainly not 

 surpassed, and scarcely equalled, by any others. 



A good deal of stress is laid upon having the cistern outside 

 of, and detached from, the stable, that the fames from it may not 

 injure the air of the stable, to the prejudice of the health of the 

 cattle, or those who tend them ; and likewise on having different 

 compartments in the cistern, that the liquid may have obtained a 

 certain age before it is applied. They are in the habit, likewise, 

 of mixing rape cakes, or the cakes which remain after the oil 

 has been expressed from the rape-seed, with the urine, which in 

 this way forms a most efficacious manure. These cakes weigh 

 generally about half a pound, and are sold by the hundred or 

 thousand. The amount of this manure applied to the land is 

 often very large ; liberal and ample manuring being one of the 

 great principles of Flemish farming. 



5. COMPOST HEAPS. The Flemish have, likewise, a mode 

 of preparing a compost heap, which is greatly approved among 

 them. They collect the scrapings of ditches, the vegetable 

 matter which is floating in them, heath, bushes, stalks of vege 

 tables, and any waste vegetable matter which they can gather : 

 with this they mix a certain quantity of earth or soil, and then 

 add quicklime in about the proportion to the heap of one tenth 

 or one fifteenth. This heap is several times shovelled and cut 

 up with a spade, until it is in a state of sufficient fineness to be 

 applied to the field. In the Pays de Waes, a district of country 

 between Ghent and Antwerp, the cultivation of which is not 



