II.] SHODDY 73 



ir.oisture. The result of the continuous and steady 

 feeding of the plant in this fashion is an equable 

 development, which is found to give rise to high 

 quality in the product. 



Hop and fruit growers, in fact, regard shoddy as the 

 best substitute for farmyard manure, of which they are 

 rarely able to make, or even to buy, as much as they 

 require ; for fruit, indeed, shoddy is often regarded as 

 preferable to farmyard manure, because it results in 

 healthier growth. The organic matter present in 

 shoddy is of value in improving the texture and water- 

 retaining power of the soil, and i to 2 tons, according 

 to the nitrogen it contains, are regarded as a fair 

 equivalent for 20 tons of farmyard manure, though the 

 latter will supply considerably more non-nitrogenous 

 organic matter. Shoddy is only suitable for arable 

 land, and should preferably be applied in the early 

 winter and ploughed or dug in as soon after it has 

 been spread as possible, in order to start the decay 

 processes. 



The inevitable irregularity in the composition of 

 shoddy, even in the output from week to week from 

 a single factory, renders its sale on any exact basis 

 a matter of some difficulty. It is, indeed, a very 

 unsatisfactory task to obtain a sample of a few pounds 

 which will properly represent the bulk of a consign- 

 ment, and the difficulties are renewed in the laboratory 

 when the large sample has to be reduced to a few 

 grammes for analysis. When, therefore, shoddy is bought 

 and sold on a guarantee, a somewhat wide margin of 

 variation must be allowed ; a large bulk is, perhaps, 

 best purchased on the basis of a given price per unit of 

 nitrogen, samples being drawn from each consignment 

 on arrival and a mean taken of their analyses in order 

 to fix the price. While nothing but an analysis will 



