BONES. 



BONES. 



bones for the turnips. The remainder of the 

 field, of exactly the same description of soil, 

 was well manured with farm-yard dung, for 

 potatoes, mangel wurzel, and vetches, to be 

 used for soiling. This was then sown with 

 wheat; but, being first well set over with a 

 compost of lime and soil, the wheat plant on 

 this part during winter and spring looked much 

 better than the boned part of the field, but did 

 not prove so good a crop ; but the difference 

 in favour of the bones was not much. Oats 

 succeeded here, also, with seeds, but the oat 

 crop bid not prove half so productive any- 

 where as on the part boned; and the clover 

 was still more inferior, and mowed only once, 

 the second crop not being considered worth 

 mowing, while the part boned, alongside of it, 

 was as much as could be well mown." 



There appears to be on many grass soils 

 some care requisite to ensure the greatest ad- 

 vantage from the application of the bones; 

 and this observation is not confined to any 

 particular district, since it is strongly alluded 

 to in the following extract from a letter of Mr. 

 William Lewis, of Trentham in Staffordshire, 

 transmitted to me in September last, in an 

 obliging communication of his Grace the Duke 

 of Sutherland: 



"I have never," says this intelligent farmer, 

 ; applied less than one ton of crushed bones 

 per acre for turnips drilled in, and have been 

 generally successful in growing that crop ; and 

 their good effects (I mean the bones) are most 

 tonspicuously shown and felt on the grass 

 erop that follows the turnips, showing to an 

 inch how far the ground has been manured 

 with them. I have no genuine fertile land, it 

 being nearly all of a light, dry, sandy, hungry 

 nature; but I have now excellent pastures for 

 sheep, which I greatly ascribe to the use of 

 bones ; for the pastures following barley which 

 have been manured with dung I find very in- 

 ferior to that manured with bones (the differ- 

 ence in the barley crop not being perceivable) 

 so much so, that I am upon the eve of break- 

 ing up some of my pasture fields which have 

 lain three years, and were intended for perma- 

 nent pasture ; for those manured at the same 

 time with bones are still looking beautiful, 

 with a close, fine, even bottom. I have also 

 applied bones to pastures, and they have gene- 

 rally improved the herbage and verdure very 

 greatly. The top-dressing with the bones I 

 would recommend to be done in moist weather, 

 when the ground is pretty well covered with 

 grass. I consider from one and a half to two 

 tons per acre to be a fair dressing. After sow- 

 ing them, the ground should be well brushed, 

 harrowed length and breadthways, then heavily 

 rolled, and all stock taken from the field for at 

 least ten days. I have seen bones applied to 

 bare pastures, with little or no covering, done 

 in hot, dry weather, showing no beneficial 

 effects whatever afterwards." There is no 

 doubt of the superior advantage of rolling the 

 bones into the soil ; for fresh, or green bones, 

 as they are called in Cheshire, when they are 

 exposed to the atmosphere for some time, lose 

 from one fifth to one fourth of their weight; 

 and even boiled bones, under similar circum- 

 stances, are reduced one third in weight. A 

 26 



bushel of crushed green bones, of the three- 

 quarter of an inch size, weighs about 45 Ibs. 

 the same bulk of bone-dust 54 Ibs. : 75 bushels 

 of crushed green bones weigh about one ton 

 and a half, the same bulk of boiled bones about 

 two tons. The average weight of the bones 

 of an ox is about 2 cwt., or about one fourth of 

 the carcase free from offal ; the bones of a sheep 

 about 21 Ibs., supposing the carcase to average 

 84 Ibs. So that, according to this calculation, 

 allowing twenty bushels of crushed bones to 

 manure an acre, the bones of five bullocks or 

 horses, or fifty sheep, are requisite to supply 

 the necessary dressing. 



Liebig recommends the following method as 

 the one by which the benefits may be most 

 speedily derived from bone applications. "The 

 most easy and practical mode of effecting their 

 division is," he says, "to pour over the bones, 

 in a state of fine powder, half of their weight 

 of sulphuric acid diluted with three or four 

 parts of water, and after they have been di- 

 gested for some time, to add one hundred parts 

 of water, and sprinkle this mixture over the 

 field before the plough. In a few seconds, the 

 free acids unite with the bases contained in the 

 earth, and a neutral salt is formed in a very 

 fine state of division. Experiments instituted 

 on a soil formed from grauwackc, for the pur- 

 pose of ascertaining the action of manure thus 

 prepared, have distinctly shown that neither 

 corn, nor kitchen-garden plants, suffer injuri- 

 ous effects in consequence, but that on the 

 contrary they thrive with much more vi- 

 gour. 



" In the manufactories of glue, many hun- 

 dred tons of a solution of phosphates in muri- 

 atic acid are yearly thrown away as being 

 useless. It would be important to examine 

 whether this solution might not be substituted 

 for the bones. The free acid would combine 

 with the alkalies in the soil, especially with 

 the lime, and a soluble salt would thus be pro- 

 duced, which is known to possess a favourable 

 action upon the growth of plants. This salt, 

 muriate of lime (or chloride of calcium) is 

 one of those compounds which attracts water 

 from the atmosphere with great avidity, and 

 might supply the place of gypsum in decom- 

 posing carbonate of ammonia, with the forma- 

 tion of sal-ammoniac and carbonate of lime. 

 A solution of bones in muriatic acid, placed 

 on land in autumn or in winter would, there- 

 fore, not only restore a necessary constituent 

 of the soil, and attract moisture to it, but would 

 also give it the power to retain all the ammo- 

 nia which fell upon it dissolved in the rain dur- 

 ing the period of six months." (Liebig's Organ. 

 Chem.) 



In manuring the light lands, cultivated on 

 the four-course system, with bones and with 

 bones only, for a long series of years, I would 

 advise the farmer, whenever he finds any symp- 

 toms of his ground failing to produce clover 

 so well as it was once used to do, to add in 

 that case a dressing of gypsum, either with 

 the bones or with the grass seeds. The value 

 of this latter manure, which is amply suffi- 

 cient, when applied in quantities of not ex 

 ceeding 2 cwt. per acre, being in most situa* 

 tions trifling. There is every reason to believe, 



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