FORAGE CROPS. 375 



" are fed to our farm stock with great profusion. After every 

 " heavy snow-storm of winter our barn-yards are covered deeply 

 " with straw to be trodden under foot by the cattle ; the lead- 

 " ing object being to get this straw wet and broken up, so that as 

 " soon as the frost has gone out in the spring, the whole mass 

 " can be flung into piles to rot, and become so reduced in bulk 

 " that, by once turning a part of it, in midsummer, we can get 

 " it into shape to draw on our wheat lands, or pastures, in the 

 *' fall. Now, what is this barn-yard manure, as it is left when 

 " the cattle are turned to pasture in the spring ? A great mass of 

 " straw, and butts of corn-stalks, having a very small per cent, of 

 "the dung of the cattle, — filling the yards two or more feet deep, 

 " and saturated with water. What sensible farmer would go one 

 " mile from home and draw this stuff to his farm, pile it, cut it 

 *' down, and repile it, and in the fall find it reduced perhaps four- 

 *' fifths in bulk, and then again load it, and draw it on his fields, to 

 " fill them with the seeds of foul weeds, when fifteen pounds of 

 "clover-seed, that would cost perhaps two dollars, and a bushel 

 " of gypsum, would manure an acre of land far better than 

 " would fifty loads of this barn-yard manure, as it was found in 

 *' the spring ? 



" Where cattle are stall-fed, and given all the grain they will 

 " eat, and in cases like this, the whole thing is changed. Manure 

 " from such sources, perhaps, would bear even here transportation 

 " for many miles. One load of the dung of high-fed horses would 

 " be worth many loads of the strawy contents of a wheat-grower's 

 "barn-yard. 



" But a i'ew words in regard to the Ohio farmer that our author 

 " found wasting his hog manure, by allowing it to run into a con- 

 " venient brook. There may have been, and probably was, much 

 " water to a little manure in this case, and like city sewage, the 

 " manure might after all have been so diluted as to have been worth 

 "much less than would at first have been supposed. At any rate, 

 " we have seen all through this country the streams made foul and 

 " unhealthy to the fish in them, and to the people along them, 

 " by the drainage of the hog-pens of distilleries. In a case near 

 " me, no man but a raiser of fruit-trees could be found, who 

 " was willing to provide water-tight wagon boxes and draw on 

 " his nursery the very much diluted manure of a large establish- 

 " ment of this kind, and within a few days I have seen the brook 

 " that runs by it used to conduct the manure to Onondaga 

 "Lake. 



" But to return to the clover. It is sometimes said, that it is 



