MR. patson's address. 9 



are the elements of good tillage, says Cato, the oldest Roman Teach- 

 er of Agriculture ? ^To plough. What is the second ? To plough. 

 The third is to manure. Study to have a large dung-hill, says he, 

 keep your compost carefully, when you carry it out, scatter it and pul- 

 verise it." This was advice given one hundred and fifty years be- 

 fore the Christian era, yet many of us are apt to regard composting 

 as a new discovery, and we probably should never have thought it 

 ■worth trying, if some modern humbugging agent had not coaxed us 

 to pay for a patent right to make it. Subsequent writers advise the 

 cultivator "not to carry out more manure than the laborers can cover 

 with the soil the same day, as exposure to the sun does it great injury, 

 and they tell us that the farmers of that day collected their manure 

 and stored it in covered pits, so as to check the escape of the drain- 

 age." How many farmers in the County, leave their manure ex- 

 posed to sun, and air and rain, for half the year ! Are there not 

 some who Avill tell you that it is improved by the operation ? 



One powerful fertilizer, little thought of, and less cared for, must, I 

 am satisfied, sooner or later come into general use, and that is liquid 

 manure. Now, it is not considered worth the pains of saving, but its 

 value is ascertained beyond question. Take for instance the house 

 plant, which your wife, or your daughter rears with care. Water it 

 with a solution of Guano, no matter whether brought from some dis- 

 tant island of the sea, or more cheaply obtained from the floor of your 

 pigeon-house — and what is the effect ? At once it stands more erect, 

 its leaves enlarge and assume a deeper hue, and what may have been 

 just now, but a sickly nondescript, seemingly out of season and 

 out of place, puts on the beauty and vigor of natural and luxuriant 

 growth. On a large scale, apply it to your grass-lands, and what 

 will be the result ? Do you say this is mere supposition, and that a 

 grain of experience is worth all the speculation in the world ? Mark 

 that spot of ground which is blessed with the drainings of a barn- 

 yard. It may be, in common parlance, the coldest spot in the field. 

 There the grass, as if the recent snow had given it life, starts earliest 

 in spring, there it is clothed with the deepest green, and there the 

 scythe of the mower finds the thickest and heaviest grass. The af- 

 termath nearly equals the first Crop, and the cattle if suflered to 

 do so, feed latest upon it in the Autumn. This is no matter of specu- 



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