MANURES. 206 



not be done; but when the soil is once so reduced as to need 

 manure to enable it to bring paying crops, this process must be 

 commenced, unless by a resort to clover, fallows, etc., the land 

 can be, for a time, brought back to a state of fertility. In this 

 case, the imperative need of fertilizers will be postponed — not 

 rendered forever unnecessary. 



So much for the quantity and value of the manure of the stable, 

 — which will be increased or diminished according to the quantity 

 and quality of the food consumed, — and the purposes for which 

 animals are kept. The next question is, how to take care of 

 that which we have. 



By the force of old usage, we speak of all of the manures of 

 the stable as " yard-manure." The farm-yard, or barn-yard, 

 however, as Dr. Voelcker has told us, and as a very little reason- 

 ing will demonstrate, is, under the ordinary circumstances of yards, 

 the worst possible place to keep or to make manure. If the yard be 

 so shaped that no drop of its liquid, even in the heaviest rains, 

 can escape from it, and if the ground be covered a foot deep with 

 swamp-muck, or with a mixture of clay and sand, the loss will be 

 very much modified ; will sometimes be reduced to insignificance. 

 Ordinarily, it is any thing but insignificant. In ninety-nine out of 

 every hundred barn-yards in America, the manure is subjected to 

 an evaporation of volatile ammonia, and to a washing away of 

 fertilizing soluble parts that must vastly reduce its value. 



When we come to speak of " barn cellar " manure, or " shed 

 manure," we shall have changed our practices for the better. 



The best place of all in which to store manure, until it can be 

 carted on to the land, is in a tight cellar immediately under the 

 animals by which it is made, where it will absorb all of their urine, 

 and will be protected from freezing, from the drying effect of 

 winds, and from the action of rains. No labor of handling and 

 forking over is required, save what will be done by the hogs that 

 fatten upon the undigested food, while they mix and compost the 

 mass better than any number of forkings would do it. 



Manure kept in this wav need never be touched, nor even 



