MANURES. 83 



from the surface water. A pile of coarse manure wet with this 

 lye would be improved in quality, and it would greatly . hasten 

 its decomposition and aid in pulverizing it. 



Special Fertilizers. I find that we can save in a year a 

 large amount of valuable fertilizers. Our plan is this : I have a 

 shed sixteen feet by eight set apart for this purpose; during 

 the fall we store here two or three wagon loads of the richest 

 and finest soil we can get. I sometimes get it from the woods, 

 sometimes from an old chip-yard, and again from under an old 

 building. We put with it some sods. On this heap we pour 

 our chamber slops, and once a month, or oftener, we clean the 

 box under the privy, and the floor under the hen-roost, and take 

 this material to the shed; we mix this at one end of the shed 

 with an equal bulk of the earth and sprinkle a little plaster 

 over it, and by spring we have accumulated quite a bulk. We 

 now cut it down with the spade, mix it thoroughly, and work 

 it over till it can be screened, and then pass it through a ma- 

 son's sieve. The coarse part is wheeled to the compost heap, 

 and the fine spread out to dry. This makes a fine and good 

 manure for using in the hill or for top dressing the radishes, 

 onions, etc., in the garden, or it can be sown with the fertilizer 

 drill on the wheat crop. I think such a fertilizer, when care- 

 fully prepared, is worth at least ten dollars per ton. I have 

 had as good results from pulverized hen manure, drilled at the 

 rate of two barrels to the acre, as from two hundred pounds of 

 bone meal. There is nothing disagreeable about preparing this 

 compost, except cleaning the privy box, for if laid up in alter- 

 nate layers of earth, and sprinkled with a small amount of 

 plaster, the mixture is odorless. 



A single experiment which I have made with bran as a ma- 

 nure, will, perhaps, be read with interest, and lead others to ex- 

 periment further. I mixed one hundred pounds of bran with an 

 equal bulk of rich mold, and wet it with leachings from the 

 manure pile. It underwent a violent fermentation, and I then 

 spread it out on the barn floor and turned it every day till it 

 cooled off, and was so thoroughly decomposed that no one could 

 have told what it was. I planted in June on a poor clay knoll 



