158 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



waste it. There is the whole trouble, — in the waste, not in 

 the little butter and meat and corn that we want for our- 

 selves. The rest is all to be carried back finally, every bit 

 of it, and so there should be no loss. 



Now, I do think, gentlemen, that, if there is anything that 

 is needed in the United States above all other things, it is a 

 reformation in regard to the care and preservation of farm 

 manures. Some six or seven years ago I sampled every 

 load of manure that went out of our covered barnyard. I 

 found that we had produced in our barnyard upwards of six- 

 teen hundred dollars' worth of potash, phosphoric acid and 

 nitrogen, computed at the ordinary prices. Well, this so 

 astounded me that I dared not publish it ; and so the next 

 winter I took particular pains to count all the animals, to 

 estimate very carefully the amount of food they consumed, 

 and to sample again and weigh every load of manure that 

 went out of the covered barnyard ; and lo and behold, I 

 found the results of the winter before verified. There were 

 about forty-five head of cattle, some eighteen or twenty 

 horses, and so on. And don't forget this, if you forget all 

 the rest, that, with an ordinary ration and an ordinary 

 animal, with ordinary prices, the manure produced by an 

 animal is worth half of the cost of the food fed to it. Can 

 any man afford to waste such a large percentage as one-half 

 of the cost of the food? That is what it amounts to. Now, 

 if I went to your barn and saw the wheat running out of 

 your granary through a rat hole, would you ask me, " My 

 dear professor, would you stop that rat hole with an oak 

 pin or a hemlock pin, or don't you think an iron bolt would 

 be better to stop that rat hole ? " You would not do any 

 such thing ; you would run and get the first thing that you 

 could lay your hand on, and plug that hole. If it was not 

 anything more than your wife's last year's sun-bonnet, that 

 hole would have to be plugged. Therefore I need not say a 

 word about the details of saving manure. I know that you 

 have good sense, and I know that every drop of solid and 

 liquid manure is under your control as perfectly as the 

 wheat in the field. 



Mr. Bowker. Would you compost in the field, or in the 

 barn? 



