250 



Manure, and the III Effects of Dirty Stables. Vol. IV. 



ascendancy so long as it could procure nutri- 

 ment to sustain it. 



Many farmers are constantly pursuing the 

 same system with their stock, which tlioir 

 stock is pursuing with their grass ; selecting 

 out the best for consumption or sale, and pro- 

 pagating from the more inferior or worthless 

 specimens that remain; and tiie result is the 

 same ; a constant down hill progress, from bad 

 to that which is worse ; and hence they very 

 unsagely conclude that there is in the natural 

 progress of the animal and vegetable king- 

 doms a constant and invariable tendency to 

 degeneracy. " Look nature through" and 

 you will see that, like begets like, and if the 

 desire is to improve stock, always propagate 

 from the best and most perfect specimens; 

 those that arrive at early maturity, or take 

 on fat most rapidly, or acquire the greatest 

 value in the shortest time, being generally to 

 be preferred. There is no complaint more 

 common than the degeneracy of sheep and 

 swine, particularly among farmers who re- 

 side within the range of a good market; the 

 reason is obvious ; the temptation to presert 

 gain is too powerful to be resisted, and away 

 go the most thrifty and healthy pigs and lambs 

 to market, leaving the scrubs and weaklings 

 at home to propagate their kind, and this 

 agreeably to an invariable law of nature they 

 seldom fail to do. It is in vain that farmers 

 incur expense and trouble to procure fine 

 stock unless they are careful to keep it up, 

 by uniformly propagating from the best and 

 most perfect specimens. Hovi^ often do we 

 hear complaints of the natural tendency of 

 stock to degenerate, when the fault lies, not 

 with mother nature, but with the very indi- 

 vidual who makes the complaint. There are 

 few neighbourhoods within fifty miles of Phi- 

 ladelphia, but what, within the last thirty 

 years, there has been at several different 

 times as complete and perfect breeds of sheep 

 and hogs as could be found in any part of the 

 ■world; and yet they are constantly running 

 out and degenerating, not through nature's 

 fault but our own ; in killing off those tliat 

 will sell for the best price. The same causes 

 always produce the same effects, and so long 

 as the cause of this pretended deterioration is 

 permitted to exist, just so long will the effect 

 continue to be produced. 



During the long and sanguinary wars on 

 the continent of Europe, the men under a 

 given standard of longitude were excluded 

 from the army; but the prodigious consump- 

 tion of men under the system pursued by Na- 

 poleon for universal conquest, obliged liim to 

 shorten from time to time the standard height 

 of his soldiers; so that those left at home to 

 till the earth, and keep up the stock wore 

 of diminutive stature. The consequence of 

 this system has been that a new race has 



been produced of less than the medium height, 

 and an American in travelling through 

 France is at once struck with the shortness 

 of stature of the inhabitants, when compared 

 with his own countrymen, who have not had 

 the taller ones culled out tor human slaughter 

 and the dwarfs left to propagate a new race 

 of Lilliputians. The laws of nature are un- 

 changeable, and the same set of principles in 

 regard to propagation have relation to human 

 beings and the brute creation ; from bad 

 comes bad, from good, good ; according as thou 

 sowest, so shalt thou reap. 



Jacob. 



For the Farmers' Cabinet. 



Manure, and the ill efTects of Dirty Staa 



bles* 



Pure air conduces to health. 



The following judicious remarks on the 

 preservation of the unne of animals have 

 Ijeen extracted from Hayward's Agriculture, 

 and may be acceptable end useful to the read- 

 ers of the Cabinet. 



" The superior effect of putting the manure 

 on the land as it is produced, as stated by Sir 

 H. Davy to be the case with Mr. Coke, may 

 be accounted for, as arising from the urine 

 absorbed by the litter, which, if left in the 

 usual way, spread in an open yard, would 

 have been wasted and lost." 



To show the fertilizing effects of urine, 

 Sir John Sinclair says, " every sort of urine 

 contains the essential elements of vegetables 

 in a state of solution. The urine of a horse, 

 being so much lighter, would be more valua- 

 ble than its dung, if both must be conveyed 

 to. any distance. The urine of six cows, or 

 horse.'^, will enricJi a quantity of earth, suffi- 

 cient to top-dress one acre of grass land ; and 

 as it would require four pounds worth of dung 

 to perform the same operation ; the urine of 

 a cow, or horse, is worth about twelve shil- 

 lintTs, (.$3,00,) per annum, allowing eight 

 shillings per acre as the expense of preparing 

 the compost. The advantages of irrigating 

 grass lands with cow urine almost exceeds 

 belief Mr. Karley, of Glasgow, (vvlio keeps 

 a large dairy in that (own,) by using cow 

 urine, cuts some small fields of grass six 

 times ; and the average of each cutting is 

 fifleen inches in length." 



In a note to the above, tlie author observes, 

 that " whilst recommending the careful and 

 effectual draining of stable.*, for the preserva- 

 tion of the urine, as the most valuable part of 

 animal manure, I will also state a circum- 

 I stance which cannot be tiiought unv.orthy of 

 I notice to agriculturists, whicli occurred to 

 ' me, to show how necessary this is also to the 

 health of animals. 



I " 1 took possession of some stables, with the 

 1 horses that had been some time kept in them, 



