THEOET AND PEACTIOE. 97 



manure in the soil before winter, you are making a 

 hot-bed underground, which will raise the tempera- 

 ture of the soil throughout the long reign of Jack 

 Frost, and preserve many a tender seed that would 

 otherwise perish : and herein lies the chief and wise 

 application of all carbonaceous or bulky manure. 

 Rightly, then, so far as their knowledge went, did 

 our forefathers, who knew nothing of Turnip culture, 

 plow in their long manure before winter: a poor 

 practice at best, we say, to put manure in immediate 

 contact with a grain crop, but not more poor than 

 to apply to a green spring-crop, under the burning 

 sun of June, the treasures of the Farm-yard whose 

 spirit is exhaled before the body is buried, and whose 

 body is not rotted time enough to afford its remnant 

 of inorganic food to the crop it is applied to. 



"Who can wonder, then, that the "artificials" 

 should sometimes beat the long manure, for Spring 

 application? And who can doubt that we wise 

 moderns have left half our lesson unlearned, in 

 having changed the time of manuring without 

 changing also the condition of the manure?* 



* Liebig is certainly good authority in many things ; but 

 oven he has been found to be mistaken in some of his posi- 

 tions. His "ash," or "inorganic" theory is very well, and 

 true enough, so far as the inorganic food of the plant alone 



