54 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



refuse matter, which we cannot use, but she asks for all. Her 

 cry is, restore. Her work is re-production. Give back, she 

 says, what I have lent. No matter how vile the form, it shall 

 come to you again in the blooming flower, the luscious fruit, the 

 golden grain. 



We hear much of the comparative value of the sciences, — the 

 moral and the exact sciences. After all, there are few sciences 

 more beautiful or of greater practical worth tlian the science of 

 manures. How shall we procure and preserve the food of plants, 

 and how shall we distribute to each its appropriate food ? for 

 plants differ in their tastes and habits, and what is nourishing to 

 one is noxious to another. To answer the last question requires 

 a knowledge of organic chemistry. The answer to the first is 

 comparatively simple. The only way to get along is to save all, 

 to gather up all the fragments, so that nothing be lost. There is 

 not a green weed that grows by the road-side, nor a refuse bone 

 that a dog leaves in the door-yard, that is not worth caring for. 

 It grieves a man's heart to see how the most precious food of 

 plants, their very life-blood, is wasted and lost. The late Judge 

 Buel, of Albany, estimated that the eight millions of cultivated 

 land in the State of New York were capable of producing six- 

 teen million loads of manure, (an under-estimate, in my judg- 

 ment,) but that in point of fact they did not produce more than 

 four millions. Estimating the value at a dollar the load, the 

 difference every year is twelve millions of dollars. 



When we come to aggregates the importance of the subject is 

 apparent. Does our practice show that we feel it ? How many 

 a barnyard, even in this county of Norfolk, can be found on a 

 hillside, near the highway. First comes the sun. He takes what 

 will pass off in a gaseous from. Then comes the rain or melting 

 snow, and what of strength is left is washed or trickles into the 

 road. Tlie owner of that barnyard must be of opinion that the 

 importance of manures is overestimated. He might just as well 

 take the l)ank bills he gets for liis hay or grain, and j)ut them 

 behind the back-log, as to waste such precious mint-drops. I 

 believe there are farmers in every county of the State, and many 

 ofthem, on which in the life-time of their owners, manure enough 

 has been wasted to pay for the price of the farm. 



Now, without going far into the chemistry of the matter, every 

 body understands that the manure from organic matter maybe in 



