NEW BOOKS. 



The Farmer's Manual, a practical treatise on the nature and value of mnnures, 

 &c. By F. Falkner, Esq. To which is added. Productive Farming, by Joseph A. 

 Smith. D. Applcton & Co. N. Y. G. S. Appleton, Philadelphia. 



These two works in one volume contain much practical infor- 

 mation for the farmer. The object of the first work, as stated in 

 tlic ])reface, is " to explain the nature and constitution of manures 

 generally, to point out the means of augmenting the quantity and 

 preserving the fertilizing power of farm-yard manure, the various 

 sources of mineral and other artificial manures, and the causes of 

 their frequent failure." 



The second part is a compilation from the various agricultural 

 writers of the present day. We give below an extract from the 

 first on the management of manures. 



" We have already said that plants in a dry state, such as straw, hay, &c., consist of 

 carbon, hyilrogen, and oxygen, a very small portion of nitrogen, and of about six 

 parts in 100 of alkaline and earthy salts; and that the former elements are placed, by 

 the operation of the vital principle, under a different arrangement with regard to each 

 other from that which their chemical affinities give them a tendency to assume. 



The combustion or burning of vegetable substances is nothing more than a rapid 

 and violent action of those affinities or attractions, in which oxygen plaj-s (he princi- 

 pal part. When they are heated to a certain degree, both the oxygen of the air and 

 that already contained in the substance are brought into action, and the result will be 

 easily understood from what has been previously stated of the nature of the elements 

 concerned. The oxygen unites with the carbon to form carbonic acid gas, and with 

 the hydrogen to form water, while a small portion of the hydrogen unites with nitro- 

 gen to form ammonia, or (though subject to some doubt) passes off uncombined. Car- 

 bonic acid gas is the most abundant of these products, water the next in quantitj% and 

 ammonia by far the least. These all escape as gases, and the ashes that remain consist 

 of some or all of the oxides, or bases, before described, united with some or other of 

 the mineral acids — as alkaline and earthy salts, which difier very much, both in kind 

 and quantity, according to the plants from which they are derived. As these salts, or 

 mineral substances constitute an essential part of ail plants, they are themselves capa- 

 bie of acting powerfully as manure. The most valuable, and generally the most 

 plentiful of them, are the salts of potash, and the phosphates of lime and magnesia; 

 not that the other salts contained in ashes are less essential ; as, for instance, muriate 

 of soda {common salt) and sulphate of lime (gypsum,) but because the latter are more 

 liberally supplied to the soil by the hand of nature. 



If, instead of being burnt, plants are accumulated in heaps exposed to the weather — 



