jiR. newell's address. 13 



would be proj5 table here, to use up the straw, as few farmers raise 

 more tliaii can be profitably used for bedding the stock ; and as it 

 becomes saturated with urine, let it go to the barn-cellar, and be in- 

 corporated with the manure-heap. He also gives assurance that by 

 his process, manure can be made of weeds, green grass, mud, and 

 other earths. 



Upon the seaboard, the washings from the ocean furnish a substance 

 which siipplies the farmer with as much as he needs for all the pur- 

 poses of absorption, and even more in many places, and in all proba- 

 bility, where this is used, salt would do no good, and might do harm. 

 It is supposed by some, that it is the salt in the sea-manures, which 

 is one great cause of its fertility. If this is so, it may account for 

 the expediency of using a suitable quantity of salt, upon all lands in 

 the interior. 



I have dwelt thus long on the subject of manure, because I believe, 

 as Timothy Pickering once said, it is "the all in all in farming." 

 Without manure we can raise no crops, and without crops we can 

 have no income. There is one other species of manure, that has be- 

 come an article of commerce — I mean guano. Its effects have been 

 powerful in certain cases, however difiicult it may be to account for 

 it — as it lies from year to year exposed to evaporation, and its ac- 

 cumulation, according to Humbolt, who visited the Islands in the 

 Southern Ocean, is very slight for a few of the last centuries, how- 

 ever it may have been before. Dr. Dana, in his Muck Manual, says, 

 "The composition of guano countenances the idea of its being the 

 excrements of birds. Probably they belonged to that ancient flock, 

 whose huge foot-marks have left their impress on the shores of an 

 estuary, which has since become the sandstone of the Connecticut 

 valley." Thus he accounts for the vast accumulation, by supposing 

 that it is the droppings of a bird, enormous in size. 



Rotation of crops is a subject so much talked of, that it needs no 

 explanation, and its beneficial results are generally admitted. That 

 corn is the best for the first crop in the course, where any animals 

 are kept, I have no doubt. That this crop in some way derives sup. 

 port from the dung turned under the sod, experiments have proved 

 clearly, and the land is left in good condition for the succeeding crop. 

 I believe any given quantity of new dung will be of as much service 

 to the second crop in a course of rotation, after laying under a crop 

 of corn, as it would be, to lay over the year, composted Avith earth 



