ANIMAL MANURES. 1 25 



more of fodder will be harvested than could have been pro- 

 cured without it."* 



Though many of our small farmers cannot be expected to 

 construct tanks and receptacles for manure such as have been 

 above described, yet even the poorest holder of land in this 

 conntiy has it in his power to do something to prevent the 

 present shameful waste of the materials which his crops 

 require, and the neglect of which, you are now prepared to 

 acknowledge, must as certainly tend to the exhaustion of his 

 fields, as if he were every year to throw a portion of their 

 produce into the sea. Remember that if you wish to succeed 

 as a farmer, it is not enough to possess a kindly soil or to 

 caiTy off the first prizes at the ploughing-match, if you are 

 every year obliged to purchase those matters to feed your 

 crops which are allowed to escape into the air, or to be washed 

 into the sewers fi'om your neglected manure heap. How 

 much money expended in the purchase of guano, and other 

 foreign manures, might be saved by a careful economy of the 

 ingredients abstracted fi'om your fields ! 



183. If you refer to a preceding chapter in which the 

 method of preparing pure ammonia is described {page 28, 

 note), you will find that that substance, so important to vege- 

 table life, is readily separated from certain compounds in 

 which it exists, by mixing them with quicklime ; thus, for 

 example, when the salt termed sal ammoniac (19), in which 

 that gas exists in chemical combination with muriatic acid 

 {page 29), forming a compound free from smell, is mixed with 

 caustic lime, the acid unites with the lime, while the ammo- 

 nia escapes, giving out its characteristic odour. Soda, 

 potash, and magnesia, in the caustic state (43, 47), also 

 possess the property of decomposing the, salts of ammonia; 

 hence when the farmer, as is so frequently practised in some 

 parts of Ireland, adds quicklime to his manure heap, the 

 carbonate of ammonia (154), produced by the decay of the 

 nitrogenised matter contained in it, is decomposed, and the 

 volatile ammonia expelled into the atmosphere. As it is of 



* A simple and perfectly effectual plan of distributing the liquid 

 manure, is to affix a piece of board, about a foot sf|uare, opposite to the 

 hole in the end of the manure barrel, so that when the plug is with- 

 drawn, the liquid, as it gu.shes out, may strike against it. By this 

 method the manure is spread out witli considerable regularity, as the 

 cart on which the barrel is fixed passes slowly along, 



