158 FIRESIDE SCIENCE. 



plough the heavy, water-impregnated furrows, and 

 in carting from the barn-yard and stable the reek- 

 ing loads of animal excrement. In these kinds of 

 labor the water is so deceptively combined with 

 earth and manurial substances that its presence is 

 hardly taken into account. It is, however, largely 

 in excess of all other material, and if we subtract 

 from the cost of force expended through the em- 

 ployment of human and animal muscle this ponder- 

 ous body, an insignificant sum remains. 



Nothing more readily attracts the attention of 

 farmers, or conveys more palpable ideas of value 

 than bulk, in manurial substances, and yet nothing 

 is more deceptive or fallacious. A huge bulk of 

 animal excrement under the eaves-droppings of 

 the barn has indeed a positive value, but it does 

 not consist in the great mass of the material of 

 which it is made up. Squeeze out the water, re- 

 move the sand and chaff, and we can place all the 

 fertilizing elements of that heap in the smallest 

 sized dump-cart. The high value of stable or 

 barn-yard manure is not found in the eighty or 

 ninety per cent, of water, silica, etc., which it con- 

 tain^, but in the nitrogenous elements, the potash, 

 soda, and phosphatic salts, which in amount occupy 

 relatively a most insignificant position. And J 

 may say further, that the excrementitious salts- 

 found in the manure heap have a higher positive 



