310 QUARTERLY JOURNAL. 



nures. We know comparatively little of the value of some of these, 

 practically ; but the Chinese are said to preserve with the greatest 

 care, even the parings of the nails, and the clippings of the beard, 

 to be used as fertilizers of the soil. 



Very little use is made in this country of the bodies of animals 

 for this purpose. If one dies, its carcase is buried, or thrown out to 

 the dogs or crows ; and thus is wasted a quantity of most valuable 

 matter, which, if made into a compost with swamp muck or peat, 

 would serve to convert several tons into a most excellent manure ; 

 and this at very little trouble, and no expense that would not be re- 

 paid many fold to the farmer in his crop. How much better would 

 it be to save such substances where they may be applied to benefit 

 a particular portion of land, than to let them go to scatter a divided 

 influence on the world? 



Precisely similar is the case with the blood and offals of animals 

 butchered for our markets. Thousands are killed every year, and 

 yet we venture to say that by far the greater part is carelessly 

 thrown away, where it will be of no use ; or is carried away by the 

 streams, to be diffused over all the world. There is by far too much 

 generosity in this, and a little more economy might be practised 

 with profit. There is an abundance of peat in every vicinity, and 

 how easily might this blood and offals be used to convert it into a 

 most active manure ? How much of this is wasted in our large cities, 

 where thousands of animals perish annually ? Enough certainly to 

 supply the grain that is devoured by a very large portion of the 

 inhabitants. 



We have lately seen a statement, that thirty thousand head of 

 cattle are yearly slaughtered in the city of Troy, the greater part 

 of whose blood and offals is throw^n into the Hudson river. 

 • And here we would ask the question of every householder who has 

 a little garden or only a spot of ground where he raises, or perhaps 

 we should rather say starves, a few stinted, scrawny vegetables, or 

 perhaps nothing but a little patch of skeleton flowers, whose an- 

 cestors were the pride of their soil, but whose children, under the 

 neglect of ignorance, are fast going to nothing ; how much really 

 valuable manure he sees wasted every year from his own house ? 

 Count the woolen rags ; the sweepings of your carpets — a capital 

 manure ; the bones ; better yet, the soapsuds, the waste of the 

 kitchen, everything that has ever helped to constitute a plant or an 



