SECTION V 

 Manures and Manuring 



i. INTRODUCTORY 



The word "manure" has now come to mean any substance that is 

 placed on or in the soil with the object of fertilizing or enriching it in 

 plant food. Originally the word meant " working with the hand ", having 

 been derived from the two French words main, the hand, and ceuvre, 

 work. There is a vast depth of meaning in the word "manure", if the 

 French derivation of it is accepted. Long before botanical or agricultural 

 science enabled man to understand the nature of his plants, and what they 

 required as food, the peasant who tilled his ground by hand was manuring 

 or " manoeuvring " it in the real sense of the word. And even to this day, 

 " working " the soil turning it up and exposing it to the weather is one 

 of the cheapest and best, if not the quickest, methods of adding fertility to 

 the soil. 



Since, however, the great and illustrious Baron Justus von Liebig 

 (b. 1803, d. 1873) propounded his theories on agricultural chemistry some 

 seventy years ago, a vast change has taken place in the methods of 

 manuring. The chemist has stepped in, and as a result of his laboratory 

 experiments he has told the gardener and the farmer, but chiefly the latter, 

 what manures he must use if .he would wish to obtain the best results from 

 his soil. A vast industry has arisen in the shape of chemical or artificial 

 manure manufacture, and thousands have become impressed with the idea 

 that their salvation as cultivators depends entirely upon the amount of 

 "artificials" they apply to their soil. Indeed, there is very great danger 

 of the art of cultivation being lost altogether amongst the agricultural 

 community, and even amongst many market gardeners. 



Cultivators of the soil should always remember the very old story of 

 the dying man who on his deathbed told his sons that they would find 

 gold deeply buried in the farm, and they had only to dig deep enough 

 to obtain it. At first the sons mistook their father's meaning, and it was 

 not until they had turned up the soil of the farm to a great depth, and 

 noticed the magnificent crops that followed, that they began to realize 

 the true meaning of their father's words. The gold came, not as they 

 expected, from the soil itself, but from the sales of their farm produce. 



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