322 CART OUT YARD-DUNG. [MAY. 



and instigate several intelligent and thinking men 

 ve more consideration to the subject than they 

 had been accustomed to do. Mr. Thompson, of 

 Northamptonshire, observing a spot in a field of 

 corn better than the contiguous parts, and not be- 

 ing able to account for it, made inquiries among 

 his people, and found that it was where long straw 

 dung had been spread, the rest in a rotten state : 

 he took the hint, and tried the comparison experi- 

 mentally : the result the same. He repeated it, 

 and was confirmed in the conclusion he drew, and 

 from that time changed his practice. A celebrated 

 farmer near Lewes, in Sussex, made a similar re- 

 mark on the comparison between yard-muck turned 

 up after winter, and some not stirred, and con- 

 vinced himself, by repeated observations, that the 

 latter was most advantageous. In addition to these 

 cases, it is remarkable, that Mons. Hasenfratz, the 

 celebrated French chemist, from experiments made 

 on a different object, and with very different views, 

 drew collaterally the same conclusion. 



" A circumstance in favour of the Picardy 

 farmers is, the continual transport of their dung 

 to their fields, rather than leave it to destroy itself 

 in the farm -yards, by waiting for fixed periods to 

 move it. By carrying it still fresh to their fields, 

 the heat of its first fermentation is employed in 

 heating the soil ; the little alkali which it contains, 

 instead of being dissolved in the farm-yard, and 

 carried away by the rain, remains in the earth and 

 improves it, if the alkali is useful to vegetation. 



The 



