APPENDIX I. 307 



answer the purpose admirably, as well as form a valuable constituent in 

 the resultant manure. An apartment of moderate size serves to contain 

 a sufficient quantity to last nearly or quite the whole twelve months. 

 Every drop of liquid manure, from stables and styes, and brought by 

 drains from the house and out-houses, is collected in cisterns. In it, pre- 

 viously to being pumped out for use, Dr. Underbill dissolves potash, in 

 the proportion perhaps of one hundred weight to thirty hogsheads — 

 which is thought to have the effect of making the manure more active, as 

 well as being cheaper than ashes, in supplying the necessary iugredients 

 abstracted by the crops from the soil. A cheap and coarse kind is 

 bought at three and a half or four cents a pound. 



"We should here devote a few words to the compost heaps we have 

 passed here and there, in our walk over the place. These Dr. Underhill 

 begins, say with a stratum of the alluvial deposits from the river side, 

 followed by one of horse or cow manure or both, then one of the sods 

 from along the roads, paths, etc., then the alluvia again, and so on. After 

 they reach some height and when the manure cisterns chance to be full, 

 a man perforates them here and there with a crowbar, and the liquid is 

 brought in a cart and put on, hogshead after hogshead, till the whole is 

 saturated. They are made amply broad enough for a cart track, ex- 

 tended to any length, and as they slowly settle down carried higher and 

 higher by additional layers till six or eight feet above the ground. The 

 same pile accumulates the manures of nine months or so, and receives four 

 or five thorough wettings. The value of a compost heap thus prepared, in 

 comparison with its cost, as would be readily conjectured, is very great. 



" In the preparation of the ground for his vineyards. Dr. Underhill thinks 

 that thorough ploughings answer every purpose. In one case, he had had 

 the earth trenched with spades, to the depth, we think, of three spits, but 

 the effect produced was of too little increased benefit to pay for the ex- 

 pense, which was, if we recollect, in the neighborhood of four hundred 

 and fifty dollars per acre. He adds a dressing of clay to render the soil 

 more firm, and prevent its feeling so quickly the changes in the tempe- 

 rature of the atmosphere, and absorbing the rains so rapidly as to drench 

 and chill the roots. A less quantity will answer every purpose than 

 might be apprehended — in pretty thorough trials he had found three or 

 four hundred loads sufficient on an acre of his rather coarse, gravelly 

 Bands. In one experiment he had spread a vineyard of about six acres 

 with 5,000 loads of alluvia and 3,000 of clay ; but it proved too rich and 

 heavy. 



" The vines are permitted to bear the first crop on a temporary trellis 

 of stakes driven into the ground and connected by a single wire. The 

 permanent trellis is then erected by putting in firm chestnut posts about 

 seven feet high, and running along them a couple of wires for the second 

 crop, and a third one near the top the subsequent season. The wire used 



