COMPOSTS. 127 



bushels of leached ashes, or, in place of the ashes, one 

 bushel of lime slaked with salt water. 



A practical farmer of great experience and judgment, 

 says that a good compost for hoed crops is formed of 

 thirty bushels of swamp muck thoroughly mixed with 

 one of guano. 



Another excellent compost, recommended by the same 

 person, may be made of the same quantity of muck with 

 two bushels of good bones. 



Another ; dig peat or swamp mud, in the fall. In the 

 spring, mix eight bushels of ashes with every cord ; or, 

 with every cord, twenty pounds of soda ash, or thirty of 

 potash, dissolved and poured carefully upon the pile. 



403. Care in the management of the Manure Cellar and the 

 Compost Heap essential to the health of the farmer s family. 



We have seen that ammonia, sulphuretted hydrogen 

 and other gases should not be lost, as they are valuable 

 as elements of the food of plants. But there are other 

 and still higher reasons why such gases should be care 

 fully prevented from coming out into the air. 



These gases, while they give life to plants, are death to 

 men. Sulphuretted hydrogen is not only very disagree 

 able to the smell, but it is thought, by some persons who 

 have carefully investigated, so poisonous that, if it float in 

 the air breathed by human beings, even in the proportion 

 of one part to 100,000, it sometimes causes death. In 

 one case, &quot;a strong, healthy man came home from his 

 work and went to bed. An hour had hardly elapsed when 

 he was found dead.&quot; In another instance, a healthy child 

 was taken ill in the morning and was a corpse at night. 

 In both cases, the air breathed was analyzed and found to 

 contain sulphuretted hydrogen. If breathed, even in 

 very small quantities, it produces stupor, or causes a low 

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