WAY TO DIG A CELLAR. 141 



cheerful look, and it is pleasant to feel that one is getting 

 rich, even if it is only on paper. Unfortunately, the money 

 I have to pay for malt-combs, bran, etc., is no small item. 

 This is real and tangible. There is no chemistry about it. 

 The dollars disappear, and it requires some faith to see them 

 in that heap of manure in the barn-yard. Still, I suppose 

 figures will not lie. I have revised the calculation, and if 

 nitrogen is worth thirty cents a pound, phosphate of lime 

 six cents, and potash seven cents, it is evident there is money 

 to be made in raising and fattening pigs. 



It is not an easy matter to save all the manure from pigs. 

 I have in the above calculation allowed for a loss of seven 

 per cent. ; on many farms, I presume, seventy per cent, loss 

 would be nearer the truth. The food of cows and sheep con- 

 tains a large proportion of woody fibre. This is voided in the 

 fasces. But the food of pigs contains very little woody fibre ; 

 nearly the whole of the food is digested, and consequently we 

 get a small amount of solid fasces aud a very large proportion 

 of liquid manure. Now, a pound of nitrogen in the urine is 

 worth- more than a pound of nitrogen in the crude, undigested 

 matter found in the fasces. And this is true to a still greater 

 extent in regard to phosphoric acid. Professor Johnson, we 

 have seen, estimates soluble phosphoric acid at sixteen and a 

 quarter cents per pound, and insoluble phosphoric acid at six 

 cents. The nitrogen and phosphoric acid in the manure from 

 pigs, therefore, is usually worth much more than that in the 

 manure of cattle, sheep and horses. It is worth, probably, 

 about as much as that found in hen-manure. In the hen- 

 manure, however, it is an easy matter to avoid loss, but in 

 pig-manure there is so much water that it is necessary to take 

 special pains to prevent its running to waste. If we can save 

 the urine of pigs, it will be fouud a very active and powerful 

 manure. On my own farm I keep on an average about one 

 hundred and fifty pigs. I have not yet used dry peat or muck 

 as an absorbent, but I propose to do so. I use more or less 

 dry earth about the pens, and I have two cellars that are only 

 partly dug out. I keep twenty or thirty pigs in each of these 

 cellars, and we wheel out the saturated earth from time to 

 time and use it as manure. 



This is an economical way of digging a cellar. We gather 



