232 On well-rotted Dung^ Stercoraries^ ^c. 



are placed, on the large scope tliey occupy, in their 

 husbandry. These may overbalance all objections, 

 even if well founded, as to the state of the material, 

 when it is used on their lands. I am now hors de 

 combat J in extensive farming. Were I to begin my 

 course over again, I should follow, in this regard, the 

 practice my past experience justifies. I should be 

 utterly fearless of any competition with hot-muck* 

 farmers ; on the scale to which we are accustomed. 



If my apprehensions of violent fermentation, and its 

 noxious effects, and the concomitant pests of weeds 

 and vermin, be deemed extreme, and my ideas of the 

 less injurious consequences of evaporation, and loss, 

 by rotting of muck in the stercorary, be thought be- 

 low the mark ; — so let them be. I have not been 

 without repeated proofs, and comparative experiments, 

 to satisfy my own mind. Our muck, it is true, is 

 chiefly composed of straw, offals of hay, and the weeds 

 and coarse grasses intermixed ; to which we add, in 

 the stercorary, all the animal and vegetable putrescible 

 substances \\t can obtain. That in Firgiiiia, as I un- 

 derstand, consists, for the most part, of corn stalks 

 . and remnants of blades ; and may not be liable to. 

 all the consequences enumerated. If the author of 

 Arator be the one suggested tome, he will give 

 his plan a fair and persevering experiment. Any 

 improvement in husbandry is highly meritorious ; and 

 more particularly so in a country which has been, 

 (so far as I have been informed,) for a long course of 

 time, stationary, in a course of Agriculture not gejie- 

 rally worthy of praise. He has, on his side, the justly 

 celebrated Arthur Youngs than whom he could not 



