186 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



izing material, which is often left to pollute the air, or thrown 

 into the river to be wafted to a bourne from which it will not 

 return in this generation. If we expect the agriculture of 

 Massachusetts to keep pace in the march of improvement with 

 its manufactures, we must avail ourselves more thoroughly of 

 the fertilizing refuse of tliese manufactures. Tlie hair parings, 

 spent bark and liquids of the tannery, the shoddy and washings 

 from the woollen factory, and the refuse of the soap-boiler are 

 only instances of the undeveloped resources in this direction. 

 The waste of the woollen mill, which even the shoddy manufac- 

 turer rejects, will raise the temperature of the compost heaps to 

 bloodheat, and rapidly disintegrate the muck and sods mixed 

 with it. We have had more experience with the waste of 

 paper-mills, and cannot too highly recommend the refuse sizing 

 which these mills furnish. It is the residuum, after the sizing 

 or glue has been extracted from the skins of animals, and con- 

 sists of hair, undissolved skin and small bones, all rich in the 

 food of plants, too rich for direct application to the soil without 

 first being diluted. Some twenty years since we noticed this 

 refuse lying around the mills, a scourge to the neighborhood, 

 and immediately made arrangements to try its powers on the 

 farm. We found its virtues so great that we have been able to 

 sell the bulk of the hay crop and still keep the farm up to 

 concert pitch. We have uniformly composted it with muck sods 

 or charcoal dust, and prefer to let it remain a year before it is 

 used. We have applied it in the autumn, mainly as a top-dress- 

 ing to grass lands. Fields thus coated in the fall, start early in 

 the spring, furnish two crops of hay, and remain green till the 

 severe frosts of winter. The luxuriance of fruit trees is so 

 great under its stimulus, that we have questioned whether the 

 great growth of wood was not at the expense of a crop of fruit. 

 Both the skin and the hair contain more nitrogen than flesh, 

 and as the hair decomposes slowly, they make not only a pow- 

 erful but lasting manure. Much of the sizing of our paper 

 mills is still thrown into the river. It decomposes so rapidly in 

 warm weather, and the odor is so offensive, that the manufac- 

 turer is glad to dispose of it in the most expeditious way 

 possible, and he does not look at it, as an Irishman once 

 remarked, with the nose of a farmer. 



