254 



THE FARMERS' REGISTER. 



nourishing the variety of plants necessary to be 

 grown lor the use oJ' man and the benefit of the 

 animal creation, a continued course of tillage, 

 and a series of years' neglect of manuring will 

 certainly render it barren and unproductive. Up- 

 on the state of the soil on every larm depends the 

 living, wc may say, ol' the larmer and his I'daiWy, 

 and carrying out the principle in its most exten- 

 sive sense, upon the activity and intelligence of 

 the (arming communiiy depends the whole in- 

 terest of the entire commercial and civil com- 

 munity of any country. These facts are so evi- 

 dent to any man, who will take but a moment 

 for reflection upon them, that it is a wonder indeed 

 that more attention has and is not directed to this 

 all important question, as to what are the best 

 manures'? No doubt the manures that are well 

 calculated to produce a decided and active influ- 

 ence at once upon many soils would not act so 

 readily and so permanently upon many other 

 soils ; but there are many manures that so act 

 upon all soils ; or, at best, there are many appli- 

 cations that may be made to almost any soil, that 

 if they are not manures themselves, form the 

 basis upon which the principles of other active 

 manures may be made to produce the most as- 

 tonishing eftects. I have recently had my atten- 

 tion directed to the use of charcoal, by the know- 

 ledge of some facts that have been communicated 

 in answer to my inquiries, that have induced me 

 to devote a paper to the subject, in the hope, at 

 least, that it will excite attention, and be produc- 

 tive, in the end, of great good to the community 

 by inducing a series of experiments upon the 

 use of charcoal as a manure, that will result in 

 immense benefit to the farming interest. 



1 shall not pretend to enter into a serieis of rea- 

 sonings upon the chemical affinities of charcoal 

 to the soil upon which it may be applied ; these 

 matters I shall leave to those whose education 

 and pursuits have better fitted them to ascertain 

 these things, by enabling them to reach them by 

 chemical analysis, which 1 am unable to make. 

 I shall simply state the facts which I have ob- 

 served, and those which I have learned from 

 others, whom I have requested to look to them, 

 together with the results that have been obtained, 

 leaving to others to say whether the question is 

 not of sufficient importance to lead them to try 

 whether the results will not be equally beneficial 

 in very many other situations. 



In the neighborhood in which I live there are 

 a great many hearths of coal pits, as they are 

 called ; places where wood has been piled, and 

 burned into charcoal, scattered about the country. 

 I have invariably observed, that upon these 

 hearths, in the course ol a few years, a luxurious 

 coat of grass made its appearance, when all 

 around in the vicinity scarcely a blade of grass 

 could be found, and what there was found out of 

 the coal hearth was sickly and dwarfish. This 

 was so well known that in the heat ol summer, 

 when the pasture in other places was dried and 

 withered by the summer drought, it was a com- 

 mon practice to drive the cattle to the " coalings," 

 as they are called, sure that they would there ob- 

 tain food. During the last autumn, business 

 called me into Harford county, in Maryland. 

 While there I was surprised at the exceedingly 

 luxuriant growth of a crop of grain but lately 

 seeded in a field, on Deer creek, and also at 



the very peculiar appearance of the soil. The 

 soil upon which the grain was growing had a 

 remarkably dark appearance, and appeared to be 

 so mellow and friable as nearly to bury the foot 

 at every step, and , although it lay very level, did 

 not appear to the touch to be so ; not as the soil 

 in the other fields around it on the same level. 

 My attention was excited by what I saw, and I 

 inquired if the field had not been covered with 

 charcoal, and was told that it had been. I in- 

 quired when it was done, and was told it had 

 been spread upon it more than twenty years ago ! ! 

 I then asked what was the general quality of the 

 crops raised upon it, and 1 was told that they 

 were invariably fine, both as to quantity and 

 quality. The person who lived upon the pro- 

 perty informed me that he had repeatedly hauled 

 the soil from that field and spread it upon the sur- 

 rounding fields, and he could, for years, or in fact 

 from the time he spread it there to the present 

 day,' always see, by the growth upon these 

 places, exactly where he had put it ! ! 



I had for some time past had my attention di- 

 rected to the subject, but here I found it fully de- 

 veloped to my full satislaction. 



VVhen I returned home, I made it the subject 

 of conversation frequently with the farmers in our 

 neighborhood, and from one of them I learned 

 that when he lived in Chester county, Pa., with 

 his father, a part of their farm became worn out 

 and unproductive. It was abandoned for several 

 years, and in the mean time many coal pits had 

 been formed upon several of the old fields, by 

 drawing the wood there to burn into coal, that 

 had been cut in the adjoining timber lands. After 

 some time they again put those fields under till- 

 age, and he states that wherever a coal hearth 

 had been left, there the crop of grain and the 

 growth of grass was, equal, if not superior, to 

 that which grew upon any of their most produc- 

 tive fields. Another case of the application of 

 charcoal I have found in this neighborhood was 

 made by a gentleman in the iron business to his 

 meadow, near the coal house. He had a large 

 quantity of the coal that had become too fine 

 to he used in the furnace ; he did not know ex- 

 actly what to do with it, it was in the way, and 

 he concluded, as the easiest way to dispose of it, 

 to haul it out and spread it upon the grass land. 

 He spread it late in the fall, and for many years 

 he informed me he observed the most astonish- 

 ing effect produced upon his yield of grass. The 

 quantity was nearly double, and the effect con- 

 tinued as long as he owned the property, which 

 was at least ten years ; so he informs me. 



From what I can see of its effects', where a large 

 quantity is left upon the ground, as for instance, 

 in the centre of the hearth, it takes a considerable 

 time for it to acquire a suflicient degree of moisture 

 to penetrate to the bottom, and until it has acquir- 

 ed that degree of moisture nothing will grow there. 

 Around the outer edges of circles where it is 

 thrown upon the ground it is soon saturated with 

 moisture, and vegetation is soon facilitated, and 

 goes on rapidly. I should judge, from this, that 

 when about to be applied to land the coal should 

 be ground fine, and then thoroughly wetted and 

 sown or spread with a lime spreader over the sur- 

 face of the soil. From the circumstance of its 

 being easily powdered or mashed up, I should sup- 

 pose that the process would be very easily effect- 



