178 Muck and Fresh Stable Manure. 



All other things being equal, this will be effected in in- 

 verse ratio to the mass. 



" Arator, aware of the necessity of meeting his fer- 

 menting muck with a powerful plant, his Indian corn 

 stands the brunt of the battle." I should rather suppose 

 he applied his muck to that crop, because it was the only- 

 one which he put in, in the spring ; also, because it is 

 more easily covered by a sward. I covered about two- 

 thirds of a five acre lot, last year, with muck drawn from 

 such a stercorary as above described, and planted it with 

 corn. There was not so much rain as to wet through 

 the dust. From the 9th of the 7th, till near the close of 

 the 8th month, on the part dunged, I could not, at any 

 time, find a shrivelled leaf; yet, in other parts, this was 

 not the case, though the whole suffered much less than 

 any other in the neighbourhood, which I principally at- 

 tribute to the minute state of subdivision to which the 

 surface soil was brought, by frequent hoe-harrowing. 

 The corn, alluded to above, was on a piece of ground 

 facing the north. The whole lot was much injured by 

 the cut- worms, in the spring ; near an acre was almost 

 entirely destroyed ; on a part of that not dunged, the corn 

 was quite ordinary : yet, notwithstanding these draw- 

 backs, it averaged eighty bushels to the acre. Therefore, 

 the part dunged, that suffered least from the worms, must 

 have had considerably above an hundred bushels to the 

 acre, though the part dunged w T as not previously in a state 

 of cultivation that would produce even a middling crop 

 of grass. 



As to the fact mentioned in the close of his postscript,* 



* The fact, I mentioned from memory, will be found more 

 minutely, but substantially alike, related in the Museum Eusti- 



