556 



NEW ENGLAND FAKMER. 



Dec. 



"uch an apartment, if they have parlors. Now 

 ..hall an injurious, inconvenient and expensive 

 iiabit be cultivated, because, forsooth, we must 

 imitate our wealty city friends? Shall we ex- 

 pend time, labor and money for that which can 

 be of no possible benefit to any one ? Let those 

 who think farming unprofitable and unpleasant, 

 consider this question. "W. C. 



Bath, N. E., Oct. 24, 1859. 



Remakks.— "Excellent — these are the phases 

 of rural life that need especial attention. 



For the Neto England Farmer. 



IS THE STOMACH MERELY A 

 COWDENSBB? 



Agricultural chemists — perhaps the majority 

 of them — inform us that vegetable or animal 

 food passed through the stomach and body of an 

 animal, receives no element which makes it more 

 valuable as a manure than it was before. One 

 hundred pounds of hay passed through the body 

 of an animal, will give about forty of manure — 

 the sixty pounds loss being carbon and water 

 expired as carbonic acid gas, of little value — in 

 so great a proportion, as is stated — in the ma- 

 nure heap. In other words, that the hay is sim- 

 ply reduced, having neither lost nor gained any- 

 thing of much value as a manurial agent. And 

 so with all other kinds of food ; as is the charac- 

 ter of the latter, so is the manure. 



The late Prof. J. W. F. Johnston entertains 

 the same opinion in his "Elements of Agricultu- 

 ral Chemistry and Geology." He says : "The 

 vegetable food, by respiration, is freed from a 

 large portion of its carbon, which is discharged 

 into the air, while nearly the whole of the nitro- 

 gen remains behind. In the food consumed, the 

 carbon was to the nitrogen as nine to one ; in 

 that which remains in the body after respiration 

 has done its work, the carbon is to the nitrogen 

 in the proportion of only two to one." Mr. 

 Juhnston observes, that loeir/lit for tveigJit, the 

 rnuiure of an animal must, in all its important 

 forces^ be richer than the vegetable food con- 

 sumed ; but he does not admit that it contains 

 anything more, but rather less, besides the loss 

 of carbon, which he regards as an unimportant 

 ingredient. 



In the last February number of the Genesee 

 Farmer, the able editor asserts the sam.e doctrine 

 in a still more unequivocal manner. "It cannot 

 be too often repeated," he observes, "that the 

 value of the manure depends primarily on the 

 composition of the food eaten by the animals. 

 'You cannot make a whistle out of a pig's tail,' 

 neither can you make a good manure out of an 

 old straw stack. You may rot it down, or feed 

 it to animals ; but it is straw still." * * * * "Un- 

 less the substances from which the manures are 

 derived contain the necessary elements, it is in 

 vain to expect to make a valuable manure from 

 fhem by any known process of feeding or fer- 

 mentation." 



In an article entitled "Barn-yard Manure," in 

 the "Annals of Science," by Hamilton L. Smith, 

 it is stated: "There are no fertilizing properties 

 gained by passing food through the body of an 



animal, and there may be nothing of material 

 consequence lost." 



All this authority would seem to shake, if not 

 entirely dissipate, the common belief, that vege- 

 table food receives important fertilizing matter 

 from the perpetual waste of the animal system, 

 or that it is transformed into such by the influ- 

 ence of respiration and the mysterious process of 

 digestion. If non-nitrogenous or even azotized 

 food, however, takes from the system more than 

 it gives, the animal in time must grow poor up- 

 on it, unless it has other resources of nutrition 

 — from the air it breathes and the water it drinks, 

 or unless the stomach has the power of chemi- 

 cally changing the food, or of creating new sub- 

 stances — which may find more belief. If heavy 

 drafts are made upon the food alone to build up 

 or sustain the animal system, enough for the for- 

 mation of muscle or of fat, then the food must 

 lose important substances in its passage, and 

 would suggest to the reflecting agricultural econ- 

 omist, whether there is not some better method 

 of manufacturing manure than the feeding of an- 

 imals. In respect to growing animals. Prof. 

 Johnston acknowledges their manure is not so 

 rich as those which are fattening ; but he seems 

 to admit no important loss in that of the latter, 

 as nothing is taken but starch and sugar. 



But, per contra, I pass to what another writer 

 says. In the last volume of the "Massachusetts 

 Society for Promoting Agriculture," there ap- 

 pears a Prize Essay on manures, by Joseph Rey- 

 nolds, M. D., who seems to entertain the more 

 common belief that there is an important, nitro- 

 genous and saline accretion in vegetable matter 

 in its transit through the animal. In this partic- 

 ular, he seems to ignore the doctrine of those 

 quoted above, though he does not directly com- 

 bat it. The essay is clearly, logically and forci- 

 bly written, generally, without extra verbiage or 

 abstruse technical terms ; and appears to me 

 well worthy the award it received. In the ex- 

 tract made, I have taken the liberty to italicize a 

 few words or phrases, for an obvious reason. 

 Dr. Reynolds observes : 



"Vegetable substances are also decomposed in 

 the digestive organs of animals, by a process, in 

 many respects, similar to that which we have al- 

 ready described. The vegetable fibre is commu- 

 nicated by the teeth, and softened and permeated 

 by the fluids contained in the organs of the ani- 

 mal. A large portion of the starch, gum, sugar, 

 gluten and salts, are dissolved out and taken vsp 

 by the lacteal vessels of the animal, to serve the 

 purposes of nutrition. The remainder, mixed, as 

 we have said, with the juices of the animal, con- 

 taining in solution various substances, is ejected. 

 This process is accomplished much more rapidly 

 than the ordinary process of vegetable decay, 

 and the substance resulting is mixed with a large 

 amount of animal matter, which fits it for rapid 

 putrefaction. The animal matter acts the part 

 of a leaven, which sets up the putrefacting pro- 

 cess, wherever the necessary conditions are pres- 

 ent. There is this difference between the reduc- 

 tion of vegetables by the ordinary process of 

 composting, and by the process of animal diges- 

 tion, viz : that in the latter process, vegetables 

 are made to afford nutriment to animals while 

 undergoing reduction, and yet in consequence of 

 the condition to which they are brought, and of 



