On burning Clay for Manure. 301 



manure, first for barley, and with better effect than dung. 

 On turnips, the effect was striking : many of them being 

 twenty -six inches in circumference. 



In another communication from a gentleman, in the 

 Farmer's Journal, London, December 30, 1816, he says 

 that the kilns should be made small by a beginner, about 

 three yards wide and six long, in the inside ; as he be- 

 comes more skilful, they may be made larger. The walls 

 are to be made of sods, two feet thick at the bottom, and 

 one foot at the top, leaving two flues in each side, and 

 one in each end, about one foot square : the walls to be 

 four feet high. As the quantity of clay is increased, 

 during the progress of the burning, the walls should be 

 raised, keeping them about a foot higher than the clay : 

 about six feet will be as high as can be conveniently 

 burnt. He applied the ashes to wheat, upon a clay soil, 

 spreading them after the last ploughing, and harrowing 

 them in with the seed, at the rate of thirty tons per acre. 

 The longer the ashes remain on the land before harrow- 

 ing, the better, that the lumps may fall and mix with the 

 soil. Mr. Curwen says, " that clover lays have been top 

 dressed with the ashes, without any apparent advantage."* 



In the Farmers Magazine of Edinburgh, for Novem- 

 ber, 1815, the following method of burning sods and 

 clay, by means of quicklime, without coals or any other 

 fuel, is given in a letter from John C. Curwen, of Work- 

 ington Hall, Cumberland, to George Dempster, Esquire, 

 and as the multiplication of manures is an object of great 

 consequence, it was thought a proper appendix to the 

 foregoing papers. On some soils, the combination may 

 suit better than either lime, or clay ashes separately. 

 - * Fanner's Journal, December 22, 1817. 



