CHAPTER IX 



BARNYARD MANURE 



The excrement of fowls is the best and of these pigeon excrement is the 

 most excellent, because it is warmest, and ferments the earth. All of this 

 kind should be strewed upon the field, and not laid in heaps like the manure 

 from cattle. Horse manure is the worst kind ; but it is so only when applied 

 to corn fields ; for it is the best for meadows, as is that of all work cattle that 

 are fed with barley, because it produces plenty of grass. CASSIUS 



98. The importance of barnyard manure. The farmers be- 

 fore the time of Christ considered the application of manure 

 one of the principal operations in agriculture and placed it next 

 to plowing. King Augeas explained the use of manure to the 

 Greek farmers, and Homer mentions a king who strewed 

 manure with his own hands. Italy immortalized the man who 

 taught the Roman farmer how to use manure. Even in that 

 day they had progressed so far as to preserve their manure in 

 pits with concrete bottoms to prevent the waste of its valuable 

 ingredients. To-day, among the peasants and small farmers of 

 some European countries, a man's prosperity is judged by the 

 amount of manure he uses on his farm, but it is only in the 

 parts of the United States that have been farmed longest that 

 the value of manure is appreciated by the American farmer. 



It is estimated 1 that the farm manure produced in the United 

 States in a single year is worth more than two billion dollars, or 

 more than the entire corn or wheat crop. This manure contains 



1 Farmers' Bulletin 21, United States Department of Agriculture. 



