47J 



MANURE. 



MANURE. 



474 



refuse substances of trade and manufactures are also available in this 

 way : woollen rags, shoddy, soapers' waste, soapers' ley, paper waste, 

 glue refuse, and refuse of salt-works, of starch-works, sugar-works, 

 slaughter-houses, cider-mills, gas-works, &c., may thus all be used. 

 Many of them are not fit for use in their natural .state ; but in compost 

 with others, and suffered to rot there, they become useful. 



Composts, too, are useful as diffusing and diluting stronger appli- 

 cations : guano may thus be economised. They exercise a beneficial 

 influence on fertility, in virtue of their mechanical effects upon the 

 soil. Stiff soils may thus be improved by vegetable composts, and light 

 soils by heavy composts. Lime, of course, is a chief ingredient in 

 composts, and has been already adverted to. Let us, however, call 

 attention to the labour of making and carting bulky and comparatively 

 poor manures, as composts generally are, in order to defend the greater 

 economy as a general rule of purchasing artificial fertilisers, in order to 

 supplement the deficiency of what may be called the natural supply. 



What an immense variety of artificials, so-called, which the farmer 

 has now at his command, is apparent from the following list : 



Guano. 

 Bones. 



Superphosphate. 

 Blood manure. 

 Wool manure. 



Nitrates of soda and potash. 



Gypsum. 



Salts of various kinds. 



Soot and charcoal. 



To guano reference has already been made. [GcANO.] It may be 

 applied to almost every crop with advantage, and it is well to mix it 

 with mould for diluting it, or with common salt for preserving it. 

 M. Barral, a well known French agriculturist, "exposed to the air for 

 fifteen days equal weights of guano, and of guano mixed with half its 

 weight of common salt, and he found that pure guano lost 116 per cent, 

 of its nitrogen during that time, while that mixed with salt had lost 

 only 5 per cent." And Mr. Northcote's conclusions are, that ' agricul- 

 tural " salt is an energetic absorbent of ammonia, both on account of 

 ita chloride of sodium, and on account of the sulphate of lime which it 

 contains ; and that the quantity of lime-salt present especially, most 

 powerfully affects its action in this way. Its agency, however, does 

 not seem to be a very permanent one, though it will collect and retain 

 the ammonia long enough, probably, for agricultural purposes. 



When thus mixed with a substance, which at the same time that it 

 fixes more or leas the volatile ingredient of guano, does also increase 

 the bulk of the manure, and so enable its 'more even distribution over 

 the laud, it should be applied during, or immediately before the 

 season of most rapid growth ; as, for instance, if for grass, just after 

 a mowing, when the young plants, furnished with a full grown ap- 

 paratus of roots are prepared to make rapid use of whatever food for 

 plants is presented to them. For the same reason too, it is best applied 

 to the wheat crop in spring time over the young plant, rather than 

 before the sowing, whether that is spring or autumn. In that case, 

 some 3 or 4 cwt. per acre of the manure properly prepared is sown 

 broad-cast, and hoed or harrowed in, or if, during wet weather, left 

 without a harrowing. For green crops again, as swedes or mangold- 

 wurzel, it i.s more commonly sown broad-cast over the raised drills, 

 between which, the farm-manure is placed, and then covered by the same 

 splitting of the drills which covers the manure. Or if the seed is 

 gown upon the flat, the guano is mixed with a large quantity of 

 ashes, and either sown broad cast previous to the harrowing which 

 precedes the sowing machine, or it is drilled under the seed by the same 

 machine a separate set of weighted coulters being used for its con- 

 i.<;e the effect being, that the manure is covered by the earth 

 before the seed is deposited above it. 



Of all the other artificial fertilisers now available in English agri- 

 culture, that which most directly comes in competition with guano is 

 the nitrate of soda, of which it is probable that large supplies may 

 become available, especially from Peru. The nitrates of potash and 

 soda are applied at the rate of about 1 cwt. per acre, and especially on 

 poor lands they wonderfully increase luxuriance of growth in corn 

 crops, and the consequent yield of corn per acre. In several instances 

 1 cwt. per acre has produced an increase of 12 bushels per acre in 

 the wheat crop, and of 4 or 5 sacks in the oat crop, and though it is 

 especially influential in the case of poor hinds, yet that it is also of 

 great service on fertile soils well-managed, is plain from the following 

 statement by Mr. Hope, of Fenton Barns, Haddington : 



He says in a letter to Mr. Pusey, " I have only applied nitrate for 

 two years to wheat, and that after seeing the account of your own 

 experiment in Mr. Caird^s ' English Agriculture. 1 In April, 1852, I 

 t"p dressed wheat after potatoes; the soil a dry gravelly loam. At the 

 time the wheat was not very promising in appearance, I sowed on part 

 1 cwt. nitrate mixed with 1 cwt. salt per imperial acre ; on another 

 portion 3 cwt. Peruvian guano was applied, and a part got nothing. 

 The nitrate of soda soon took the lead, and kept it. A portion of each 

 threshed separately, when they were found to yield as follows, 

 viz : 



P*a IUD.BIAI, ACIIF.. 



1 cwt. nitrate of noUa 

 3 cwt. guano . 

 Nothing 



Straw. 



. 37} cwfa). 



36 

 . 3 



Wheat. 



. 53 bushels, 



" In 1853 I tried the same thing on wheat after beans ; I never, how- 

 ever, could detect any difference with the eye, except where the crop 

 got nothing, though iu the former year the difference between the two 

 manures could be seen at a glance ; and having cut the crop with a 

 reaping machine, which rather intermixed the lots, I was prevented 

 threshing them separately. I have bought 5 tons of nitrate for next 

 year and mean to apply a portion to potatoes." 



The only reason why nitrate of soda is preferred to nitrate of potash 

 depends upon the greater cost of the latter. The proper time for sow- 

 ing either is during the period of rapid growth ; they, like all soluble 

 manures, are immediately spread throughout the soil by the showers, 

 and of course are liable to waste unless the plant to which they are 

 applied be ready to use them at once. Both of these salts are liable to 

 adulteration, and common salt is the chief substance used for this pur- 

 pose ; its presence is detected on throwing any of it on some hot coals 

 by the crepitating sound which follows. Pure nitre burns the coal up 

 without any of these little explosions. 



We come now to the use of bones as a manure. Raw bones contain 

 perhaps half their weight of phosphate of lime ; when burnt they con- 

 tain perhaps 60 or 65 per cent, of phosphate of lime. It is chiefly for 

 this phosphate that the bone manure is valuable, and as in addition to 

 the greater quantities of phosphate which burnt bones contain, they 

 are also superior as regards the facility with which they can be 

 decomposed, burnt bones are more valuable agriculturally than raw ones. 

 This phosphate exists in the mineral world both as fossils and simply 

 in the mineral form ; some of the fossils contain half their weight of 

 phosphate of lime ; and apatite, a mineral phosphate imported from 

 Norway and America, contains upwards of 90 per cent, of phosphate of 

 lime. It is, however, in its natural state almost valueless as a manure, 

 owing to its insolubility ; and as the agricultural value of bones can be 

 greatly increased by increasing their solubility, so whatever value 

 this mineral phosphate possesses is conferred upon it by the same 

 process. 



This process consists in the adoption of means which shall have the 

 effect of reducing the material to a fine state of division. When the 

 phosphate of lime is acted on by sulphuric acid one half the lime is 

 taken forms it by the acid, and so sulphate of lime or gypsum is pro- 

 duced, the other half of the lime iu combination with all the phos- 

 phoric acid forms what is called super- phosphate, which is characterised 

 by its solubility in water ; and although when it becomes mixed with 

 the earth when put on the land, this extra quantity of acid becomes 

 neutralised by the lime or the alumina of the soil, yet having been 

 once decomposed the bone earth retains so exceedingly finely divided a 

 state that rain is able to act upon it as a solvent much more power- 

 fully. The reason why bone-dust is more powerful as a manure than 

 the original bones is, that its finer division gives a larger surface for rain 

 water to act upon, and wash off a portion of its substance as food for 

 plants. Ground and fermented bones are thus more immediate in 

 their action. For further remarks on the use of bones and guano we 

 refer to articles on those subjects. It is to them that we mainly 

 look in this country for the means of supplementing the natural supply 

 of manure on the farm. 



It is not worth while going into any detail regarding the particular 

 fitness of other special manures. In practice no reader is likely to go 

 into the manure market for sulphate of magnesia and soda, nor even 

 for silicates of potash and of soda ; though these are said to be directly 

 useful in strengthening straw. If the farmer can get a supply of 

 guano, bone dust, superphosphate, and nitrate of soda, to supplement 

 farmyard dung, he is not likely to go further. 



As to the value of special mixtures of different salts on manure, 

 certainly the fancy for that kind of thing ran wild some years ago, 

 but the relative values of manures are becoming now better under- 

 stood. It is, however, right that we should say a word on soot as a 

 manure. It is tised everywhere with good effect in virtue of the 

 gyji.sum which it contains, and in virtue of the small quantity of 

 ammoniacal salt which it retains as driven off from the coal. Thirty 

 bushels per acre are a common dressing for grass; and for potatoes it 

 has been long known as a useful manure. 



Leaving now the subject of auxiliary manures which has latterly 

 become one of the most important in the whole range of English 

 agriculture we recur once more in conclusion to the ordinary farm 

 practice connected with the annual replenishment of the soil. Farm 

 buildings should be so made as to remove all the water which falls 

 upon the roofs, that it may not dilute the manure made in the yards. 

 Their yards if any are open should be small and partly covered. 

 Arrangements for feeding in boxes where all the excrement is absorbed 

 by the litter are to be preferred ; and where yard-manure is made, or 

 stall-fed cattle have to be daily cleaned out, the manure thus daily 

 made should be daily removed to heaps made on Mr. Lawrence's plan, 

 to which reference has already been made. 



One word further may be allowed on the practice of folding sheep 

 on land, and of top dressing clover and grass lands ; the policy of that 

 practice has been remarkably justified by the researches of Dr. Volcker, 

 to which allusion has been made. Hitherto the wastefulness of top 

 dressing has been admitted universally, and the practice has been 

 regarded as one of the unfortunate circumstances connected with the 

 plant so treated, which could not be avoided. Both top dressing and 

 folding, however, which latter has all along been distinguished by the 



