ESSEX SOCIETY. 89 



when they are seen to resort to them for it, we may be sure 

 there is a deficiency in their pastures. Bones have been much 

 longer and more extensively used in England than in this 

 country. More than twenty years ago, the importation of 

 bones into England, amounted to more than forty thousand tons 

 a year, at an expense of more than five hundred thousand dol- 

 lars. Their use has been much increased since. They are 

 brought from all parts of the world. Agents are employed in 

 this country to collect bones to enrich the farms of England. 

 It is to be hoped that every farmer will save a substance which 

 has been so long thrown away, and which would prove one of 

 the richest manures he could use. The bones, when dry, may 

 be crushed and pulverized with an axe. There are rainy days 

 enough which would not be better employed. Mills are es- 

 tablished in various parts of the country, for the purpose of 

 grinding bones. They are sometimes ground in plaster mills. 

 A mixture of crushed bones and ashes, or leached ashes, forms 

 one of the most valuable top dressings. Nor Avill this applica- 

 tion, in small quantities, be thought expensive, when we con- 

 sider that the animal part of bones, which amounts to about 

 one-third, contains eight or ten times as much ammonia, as the 

 ordure of the cow, and that the fertilizing salts in bones are 

 sixty-six times the amount of a like quantity of the ordure of that 

 animal.* So that a smaller quantity of bone dust will answer 

 the same purpose of a much larger quantity of manure from 

 the stable. We can but hope that every farmer will try the 

 experiment. It may be done on a small scale, at first, though 

 in the vicinity of every butcher's establishment, bones can com- 

 monly be procured in any quantity. 



Thus far we have treated of manures, which belong more 

 peculiarly on the surface, as a top dressing for grass. For 

 though they are sometimes used, especially plaster, on ploughed 

 land, with potatoes and other crops, yet their influence on the 

 surface is thought to be far more efiective. Indeed, the bene- 

 fit of lime, plaster, and charcoal, would, in a great measure, be 

 lost, were they to be buried to any depth in the earth. But 



*We state this en the authority of Dr. Daiia. 



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