34 



and barnyard should be well littered, and the litter gathered 

 up and placed under cover as the most valuable ingredients 

 are soluble in water, and would be leached out by rains. 



If the interior of a pile of manure becomes too dry, decom- 

 position will cease, and the manure become " fire-fanged "* when 

 water should be poured on. The object to be obtained being 

 not too much nor too little water. 



THE AKT OF COMPOSTING. 



It is from the neglect of this highly useful and important art 

 that our planters and farmers are responsible for so many ster- 

 ile and uncultivated fields, and for so many high-priced and 

 complicated fertilizers. As long as the planter takes from his 

 fields all that they will bring and carries it away, so long will 

 the land that he plants become poorer and poorer, until crop- 

 ping is unremunerative. 



This is the present condition of most of the lands in the 

 Southern Atlantic States; and in order to compete with the 

 great cotton States of the Southwest, our planters have to fur- 

 nish to their lands nearly all the elements required for plant 

 food. 



Hence has sprung up a trade in so called " Commercial Fer- 

 tilizers," in which all these elements, or the most important of 

 them, are, or are said to be. These different elements occur in 

 commerce in many and various forms, and are brought from 

 different and widely separated places, so that to obtain them, 

 import them, combine them, and sell them, requires considerable 

 knowledge, judgment, capital and skill. It is evident that if 

 any of these ingredients can be furnished and combined by the 

 planter, the resulting fertilizer will be cheaper, and the saving 

 will be proportional to the cost of the ingredient. 



If the whole crop were returned to the field as manure.*^ 

 the ingredients would be furnished for the succeeding one; but 

 in practice some (and that generally the richest in plant food) 

 is exported, and the residue is too often tossed aside and 

 neglected. Thus all that the planter can do is to save some 

 of this plant food, while a large part of that exported has still 

 to be bought from a manufacturer of those particular elements. 



Now it so happens that those elements which the planters 



fHaving a dry frosted appearance. 



