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THE GENESEE FARMER. 



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have long believed tliat not far from half of the fertilizing elements contained in common 

 manure, failed to enter the roots of cultivated plants, and was reallv lost to the farmer 

 and to the world. 



In cold weather, the escape steam can aid the fermentation and solution of manure, 

 should this operation be more tardy than is desirable ; but as the mass of manure is in 

 a water-tight reservoir, from which the liquid is drawn off whenever it is desirable to 

 remove it, the decay of the organic substances may be hastened or retarded at the will 

 of the operator. 



Treated in this admirable manner, meadows have been mown every month for soiling 

 dairy cows, fatting cattle, and other stock, and have yielded the astonishing amount of 

 eighty tons of Italian rye grass in a season, worth from 125. to 13s. a ton. Some irri- 

 gated meadows paid £31 rent in 1850 and 1851 ; and hundreds of acres were let at 

 £20, or $100 dollars per acre. 



In some cases earthen pipes, something like hard burnt draining tile, but larger, 

 thicker, and much stronger, are used for the distribution of water and manure. These 

 cost less than half as much as iron pipes. Hose. 800 yards in length has been used, so 

 that a single penstock answered for irrigating ten acres or more. At two or three 

 establishments the water is pumped into an elevated tank that gives a head of seventy 

 or eighty feet upon the pipes and hose, which of course forces more water through any 

 given aperture, and favors the spreading of the artificial shower of rain ; but the force of 

 a small engine without the head, is found to be all-sufficient to drive the liquid where- 

 ever it is needed, as the doctors say, pleno rivo. 



"What water has accomplished in canals, and steam on railroads for transportation and 

 travel, water and steam are about to do for the farmer on his own estate. Everybody 

 knows that the use of steam as a motive power, is an invention of but yesterday in the 

 histoiy of our race. If the agricultural engineers of the largest experience, and of 

 unquestioned science, in England, are right in their calculations to the efl'ect that 112 lbs. 

 of coal will elevate Yl5 tons of water ten feet; then it may be demonstrated that an 

 American farmer can abundantly irrigate an acre of land five times in a season, by burn- 

 ing one-half of the cornstalks that will gi-ow in a single crop on said acre the year 

 previous. It is the burning of organized carbon and hydrogen in coal, wood, and other 

 fuel, that generates heat and steam ; and on good land, Ave know of no plant or forest 

 tree that will organize carbon and hydrogen faster than our indigenous, imequalled 

 maize. This organized carbon and hydrogen will be sufficient to form all needful power 

 in the systems of working horses, oxen, and mules, and in the more durable and power- 

 ful system of a steam agricultural locomotive. 



By the kindness of Dr. Staxsburg, of the Patent Office, we are in possession of a 

 very late official report made by the London Board of Health, in which the sul)ject of 

 irrigation and conveying city sewerage ten miles into the countiy, driven through pipes 

 by steam, is discussed and illustrated in the fullest manner. The most valuable of these 

 illustrations we shall have engTaved, and furnish our readers with all the material facts 

 of this new application of science to agriculture. In Germany, some sixty-two square 

 miles of soil have been made by simply driving muddy water, like that of the Missouri 

 river, only more so, through earthen pipes, extended over a sand-desert. To illustrate 

 the modus operandi, let us suppose that one has 100 acres of very poor and almost 

 drifting sand, with a clay bank and a stream of water on one side of the tract. By 

 plowing up this clay, and washing it with running water, a very muddy stream may be 

 formed ; and with a sufficient head, and pipes of from three to six inches aperture, 1000 

 tons of clay may be spread every twenty-four houre over these 100 acres of sand, by the 

 labor of twelve horses. That water having a full head of only twenty feet will run 

 rapidly through a six inch, or even a three inch bore, every school boy knows. 



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