120 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



No doubt, there are special cases in which the ap- 

 plication even of Peruvian Guano at $90 per tun is 

 advisable. A compost of Muck, Lime, &c., equally 

 efficient, might be far cheaper ; but months would be 

 required to prepare and perfect it, and meantime the 

 farmer would lose his crop, or fail to make one. If 

 a tun of Guano, or of some expensive Phosphate, 

 will give him six or eight acres of Clover where he 

 would otherwise have little or none, and he needs 

 that Clover to feed the team wherewith he is break- 

 ing up and fitting his farm to grow a good crop next 

 year, he may wisely make the purchase and applica- 

 tion, even though he may be able to compost for 

 next year's use twice the value of fertilizers for the 

 precise cost of this. But I am so thorough in my 

 devotion to " home industry," that I hold him an un- 

 skillful farmer who cannot, nine times in ten, make, 

 mainly from materials to be found on or near his 

 farm, a pile of compost for $100 that will add more 

 to the enduring fertility of his farm than anything 

 he can bring from a distance at a cost of $150. 



Understand that this is a general rule, and subject, 

 like all general rules, to exceptions. Gypsum, I 

 think every farmer should buy ; Lime also, if his soil 

 needs it ; Phosphates in some shape, if past ignor- 

 ance or folly has allowed that soil to be despoiled of 

 them ; Wood Ashes, if any one can be found so 

 brainless as to sell them ; Marl, of course, where it is 

 found within ten miles ; Guano very rarely, and 

 mainly when something is needed to make a crop be- 



