FARMERS' REGISTER 



723 



fouriciation, (here are few systems betler support- 

 ed. 'I'iierelbre, al'ier liavin<T (le<liice(l tlie henefir 

 resiihitiijf to land by inclosinii, Croni the hypoihe- 

 pii=; that, ve.irelables draw, retain, and besiovv on 

 the eai th the atmospherical manure in (jreal abun- 

 dance, I shall prcceed to consider oiher modes of 

 manuring it, chiefly Ibunded in the same liypo- 

 thesis. 



MANURING. 



[t is not my desiofn to advance any thinijplranse 

 or new, or to recommend expensive, difficult, or 

 uncommon modes ol' improving land. Brilliant 

 projects lor improvement, in the present state ol' 

 af^riculture, would be like diamonds set in lead. 

 JVly utmost desiiin is to point out n few improve- 

 ments which even ignorance can understand, and 

 poverty [)raciise ; yet such as may not be be- 

 neath the regard ol knowledge, nor the interest of 

 wealth. 



The most abundant sources for artificial manure 

 in the most exhausted district of our country, are 

 the offal of Indian corn, tiie straw ol small grain, 

 and the dung of animals. We find in the two 

 first, proofs of the value of dry vegetables as a 

 manure. If these few n)eans for lerlilizing ihe 

 counir)', were sUill'ully used, they would of them- 

 selves suffice to change its state froai sterility to 

 fruitlulness. But they are so egregiously neglect- 

 ed or mismanaged, that we liardly reap a tithe of 

 llieir Viilue. 



There is no fuinacious plant which furnishes 

 so rich and so plentiful a crop as the Indian corn. 

 It yields food in abundance lor man, beast and 

 land. By the litter of Indian corn, and of small 

 grain, and by penning cattle, managed with only 

 nn inferior degree of sjiili, in union with inclosing, 

 I will venture to affirm, that a firm may in ten 

 years be made to double its produce, and in twen- 

 ty to quadruple it ; the ratio of its increased value 

 is of course siill irreaier. 



There is no other secret in the business than 

 that none of these manures be wasted. The ag- 

 riculturist who expects to reap good crop.s from 

 neglecting his manures, is equally a fanatic with 

 the religionist, who expects lieaven from neglect- 

 ing his morals. 



Details, however unentertaining, may not be 

 useless ; therefore I shall often lesort to them. 

 The stalks of corn should con>tiiute the chief litter 

 and part ol the food, both of the stable and farm 

 pen yard, during the winter. The sooner they 

 are used after the corn is gathered, the more sac- 

 charum remains to bestow value on them as fimd, 

 antl the more manure they will yield, as evapora- 

 tion diminishes both ; and this proceeds far more 

 rapidly whilst standing single, subject to the vicis- 

 situdes of weather, than when immersed in the 

 Etead^'^ moisture and cold climate of ilie farm yard. 

 As a food, they are betier for horses than lor cat- 

 tle, because of the superior masticating power of 

 the f()rmcr ; whereas cattle are abf''. to eat but 

 little of the stalk itself, and chiefly confine them- 

 selves to picking an inferior food attached to if. 

 Stalks carneci morning and evening in loads, into 

 the liirm pen and stable yard, furnish both to cat- 

 tle and horses much food, but to tha latter, early 

 in the winter, (hey are a species of fodder the most 



beneficial I have ever tried ; and besides the ma- 

 nure they furnish, will amply recompense the farm- 

 er, by enabling him to spare his hay and corn 

 blades, to be used when the labor of his team be- 

 c(>mes harder. They enable him also to relieve 

 his land from the tax of pasturing horsfis, by the 

 preservation of hay and blades fur the summer's 

 use, and are in that way eminently subservient 

 to tlie inclosing system. 



To the stalks are to be added the blades, lops, 

 shucks and cobs of the Indian corn, all in some 

 degree a food, and a plentiful litter. The value 

 ol the cob as a food is highly spoken of, but has 

 not been ascertained by me; as a manure, by de- 

 positing them in deep furrows two or three feet 

 apart, barely covering them with a plough, and 

 bringing the land two years afierwards into tilth, 

 1 have found them excellent. In every view they 

 illustrate the vegetable power of elaborating at- 

 mosphere into hard and enriching substances. 



The great object in making and applying the 

 manure arising from litter of every kind, and the 

 dung of animals, is to avoid the loss by evapora- 

 tion. In obedience to the old English authorities, 

 I have in various \>?ays compounded dunghills, 

 kept them through the summer, and covered with 

 earth and with bushes, the manure of the farm 

 pen ; and the loss has been regularly graduated 

 by the fermentation produced, from a moiely to 

 iliree fourths, being invariably greater, the betler 

 the litter was rotted, or the greater the degree of 

 lermentation. Asa liiriher experiment to ascer- 

 tain the same fact, I have several times pennrd 

 the same cattle on the same space Tjt the same 

 period, [)loughing up one portion as soon a? the 

 pen wds removed, and leaving the other unplough- 

 ed lor eight or ten weeks. On putting both at one 

 time in the same crop, the result has unilbrmly 

 been, a vast inliiriority to a line, of that left expos- 

 ed to the effects of evaporation. 



An effervescence which shall become so intense, 

 as to produce a visible evaporation or smoke, ia 

 said to be an effect of ploushing in a cover of 

 green vegetables, and this efliect is stated as an 

 argument of fertilizing consequences to the earth. 

 If an escaping torrent of manure is calculated to 

 impart lasting fijrtility to the earth, then the hy- 

 pothesis which considers evaporation as a channel 

 lor impoverishing, and not for fertilizing the earth, 

 is an error. Then also the ancient English habit 

 of making manure by contriving every means of 

 promoting evaporation is correct, and the modern 

 notion (hat this habit wastes manure by restoring 

 it to the atmosphere, is incorrect. The heat of 

 the sun will sometimes make wet earth smoke, 

 but instead of enriching, it thereby extracts the 

 manure contained in water. The evaporation of 

 green vegetables in a perceptible smoke, must 

 have a similar effect. The idea that this smoking 

 of the earth was a proof that we were making h 

 great quantity of manure of green vegetables, 

 may have been borrowed from inferring the same 

 thing from the smoke of dunghills compounded of 

 dry; and whilst the latter opinion is exploded by 

 the common instances of the vast loss of manure 

 it produces in these dunghills, Ihe former may 

 have continued, though founded in the same 

 principle, lor want of familiar experiments to dis- 

 prove it. 



The system of husbandry for fertilizing the 

 earth, by increasing its friability, for the saka of 



