Vol. 6. 



GENESEE FARMER. 



55 



barn yarJ, in order that its lime and sulphuric acid 

 might seize and retain the ammonia which escapes 

 during the fermentation of the manure ; but the best 

 authority decides, that swamp muck, bog peat, or 

 even conunon loam, is better than plaster — that the 

 manure should be pressed down and covered up with 

 straw, in the barn yard, to prevent fermentation 

 there — that it should be hauled out on to the land 

 intended to be manured, as early in the spring as 

 possible. If it cannot be plowed under before it fer- 

 ments, it should be fermented in heaps covered up 

 with swamp muck, or even the surrounding earth, if 

 time cannot be had to procure other matter. Just 

 air enough should be admitted to the manure to pro- 

 mote fermentation ; but none of its gases should be 

 allowed to escape through the earthy covering. Da- 

 vid Thomas has advised, that a thin coat of lime or 

 plaster should be thrown on the top of the earth 

 which covers the fermenting dung : but that in no 

 case should caustic lime be mixed with barn yard 

 manure : when the lime has become carbonated by 

 being some time mixed with loam or muck, it may 

 then be safely mixed with the compost. Lime in the 

 hydrate state spoils animal manures, urine, and sta- 

 ble dung, although it is useful in that state to reduce 

 and render soluble the fibre of such undccomposed 

 matter, as peat-bog, leaves, straw, chip dung, &c. 

 fee. Lime is also useful to decompose the inert ve- 

 getable matter in the soil. When soils fail to pro- 

 duce wheat, our farmers suppose that their vegetable 

 matter is exhausted ; this is a great mistake — it is 

 only the alkalies, earths, and metallic bases that are 

 wanting. These alkalies dissolve the vegetable 

 matter in the soil, and fit it for the food of plants ; 

 they attract the ammonia and carbonic gas from Na- 

 ture's great storehouse, the atmosphere, and prevent 

 their escape, giving them off slowly as food to the 

 growing crop. 



It has been rightly said, that the atmosphere, and 

 not the earth, is the great storehouse of vegetable 

 and animal food. The decomposition of all vegeta- 

 ble and animal bodies fills this air with the gaseous 

 elements of organic life. Burn a candle, and you 

 add nearlv its weight of carbon to the atmosphere ; 

 that same candle is returned again to the earth, and 

 from the earth again to the ox, and from the ox 

 again to a candle : a perfect reorganization takes 

 place — nothing was lost by the burning of the can- 

 dle, nothing is created in the fattening of the ox — a 

 re-combination only takes place. How often do we 

 hear a farmer boast of having dug his fortune from the 

 earth ; when it is a well-settled fact that 97 parts in 

 100 of all the solid stracture of all his corn, pork, 

 b*f, kc, (bones excepted) is derived ^fom the at- 

 mosphere. Hence, how encouraging- is it to the 

 Seneca co. Farmer to know, that the farmer on the al- 

 luvial prairies in Illinois has no advantage over him, 

 save in the presence of the j'^t unexhausted salts in 

 the soil, all of which must soon be lost, by an im- 

 provident wasteful system of husbandry. 



It is now our purpose to learn, how these univer- 

 sal atmospheric treasures are to be seized upon — 

 "by what drugs, what charms, what conjurations, 

 and what mighty magic" we are to convert them 

 into corn, wine, and oil — the fatted calf and the 

 stalled ox. 



In the first place, then, we will say, that plants 

 are principally composed of four simple substances, 

 — to wit, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, 

 together with about three per cent, of inorganic 



cultivated for the food of man and other animals, 

 nearly 50 per cent, is carbon. Oxygen in plants 

 exists in the form of water, or sap, as eight pounds 

 of every nine of water is oxygen. Hydrogen is the 

 lightest substance found in the structure of plants, 

 and is received by them in combination with nitro- 

 gen, as ammonia. Nitrogen, although forming 79 

 per cent, of the bulk of atmospheric air, is supposed 

 by Liebeg not to enter into the composition of plants 

 directly, but only when combined with hydrogen, it 

 forms a volatile soluble gas called ammonia ; this 

 gas is the great stimulus of all growing plants ; 

 when it escapes to the atmosphere, it is condensed 

 and brought to the earth by the dew and rain, ready 

 food for the roots and leaves of plants. As the 

 earth is the receptacle for the above-named consti- 

 tuents of plants from the atmosphere ; and as it is 

 on the earth that these gases are continually gene- 

 rated from decayed vegetable and animal matter, it 

 is of vital importance to the farmer that he keeps 

 the surface of the soil, on which plants are grown, 

 open and loose by tillage. When plants are in their 

 incipiency, this is all-important, as they then feed 

 mainly from their roots ; but as they progress in 

 leaf, tillage becomes less and less imperative, as 

 many plants now feed more from their leaves than 

 from their roots.* Those who have grown a large 

 yield of Indian corn, while their neighbors have suf- 

 fered a partial failure of the same crop, will bear me 

 out in the assertion that the early hoeing, even be- 

 fore the plants are fairly out of the ground, is the 

 grand arcanum in the art of Indian corn growing. 

 This hoeing lots in the ammonia from tho dew and 

 rain, and also that warmth of the sun, which alone 

 can secure that early tenacity of root, without which 

 Indian corn is a very uncertain crop. 



This loosening and pulverizing the soil not only 

 lets in the ammonia and carbonic acid from the at- 

 mosphere ; it also makes the loosened earth a labor- 

 atory, where every particle of decomposing matter 

 in the soil is made soluble food for the growing 

 plant. Liebig says, that all decaying vegetable 

 matter on the earth's surface is a source of carbonic 

 acid ; as also, that all putritying animal matter is 

 constantly giving off ammonia. 



It is also necessary to ameliorate the mechanical 

 structure of heavy, tenacious soils, by plowing in 

 long manure, or green crops — thus rendering the 

 soil porous, and capable of absorption. I often hear 

 a farmer say of a particular lot, that it has been 

 cropped until it is heavy and dead. In this state the 

 ammonia deposited by the dew and rain on the sur- 

 face, is immediately taken back again into the atmo- 

 sphere, by the first sunshine or dry wind. Thus 

 many soils are accused of sterility, when nothing is 

 wanting to them but a mechanical change from 

 heavy and dead to light and porous : as it is in this 

 state alone that the soil can receive and distribute 

 the atmospheric gases. 



Go into your garden in the morning, and examine a 

 bed that was raked the previous evening : it will be 

 wet with dew, induced by capillary attraction. Then 

 look at a bed which has not been raked since the 

 last shower : it will be found crusted over and dry, 

 or much drier than the new bed. A little manure, 

 with thorough mixing and good tillage, is better than 

 much manure badly distributed ; the working of the 



* When a plan/ is quite matured, the carbonic acid in the soil is 

 no louffer required. 



„ During the heat of summer, plant! derive carbon exclusi\eiy 



matter, forming the ashes. Of vegetable substances I from the air.—LieHg. 



