MANURES. 



MANURES. 



these authors recommend), in his Treatise on 

 Earth (p. 123 160), gives several recipes, 

 some of which have served as the bases for 

 recent modes of preparing liquid manure ; 

 such as the dung of cattle, urine, salt, and lime, 

 nitre. 



The employment of crushed bones as a manure 

 is but a very modern improvement ; it is not 

 one of the fertilizers even mentioned by the 

 early agricultural writers ; and to this neglect 

 of bones several causes contributed. The ne- 

 cessary machinery for crushing them was, in 

 the early ages of agricultaral efforts, totally 

 unknown ; and bones when unbroken dissolve 

 in the soil much too slowly to be of any appa 

 rent value as a fertilizer. The use of bones is 

 an improvement, for which agriculture is en 

 tirely indebted to the enterprize of the English 

 farmers. The refuse matters produced by the 

 ivory and bone turners and cutlers of Sheffield 

 which speedily accumulated in very consider 

 ble heaps around their manufactories, first 

 drew the Yorkshire farmers' attention to bone 

 manure. The cultivators of the poor soils in 

 the neighbourhood of that town, towards the 

 conclusion of the last century, began to carry 

 away these refuse matters with some readiness, 

 and the turners were at first too glad to be 

 relieved from this bone-rubbish, to think of 

 charging them any thing for the valuable ma- 

 nure they had been the first to employ. As 

 however, the Yorkshire farmers soon began to 

 scramble for these bone-turnings, the manu- 

 facturers of Sheffield speedily made a small 

 charge for them, which has since gradually 

 increased in amount. It required, however, 

 some time to bring about this great and sue 

 cessful improvement. Mr.T. Ellin, late master 

 cutler of Sheffield, well remembers, some fifty 

 years since, the bone refuse carted into Shef- 

 field Moor, and buried in pits as worthless 

 rubbish ; these old deposits, often found in 

 digging foundations, are now carried off with 

 much alacrity to the bone-crushing mills. The 

 farmers at first gave sixpence a bushel for 

 these parings and turnings ; of these about 600 

 tons are annually sold in Sheffield. By the 

 sole use of this fertilizer, great breadths of 

 very poor land have been successfully brought 

 into cultivation, and maintained in a state of 

 the greatest fertility in the north and east of 

 England and Scotland. Their effects upon the 

 wolds of Lincolnshire has been magical. The 

 first person, perhaps, who successfully used the 

 roughly broken bones from the dog kennel as 

 a manure was General St. Leger, in 1775. 

 (Evelyn's Sylva, by Dr. Hunter.) 



Manuring with fish was necessarily an im- 

 provement of an advanced state of agricul- 

 ture ; we have no mention of them as thus 

 used in the early agricultural authors ; the im- 

 mense shoals of sticklebacks, and other small 

 fresh-water fish, which once tenanted the fen 

 counties of England, first gave the farmers of 

 Lincolnshire an opportunity of using this rich 

 oily manure ; they were towards the latter end 

 of the eighteenth century sold by the fen fisher- 

 men at about sixpence a bushel ; and Arthur 

 Young tells us, that at one village on the bor- 

 ders of Cambridgeshire, 2000Z. have been taken 

 for these fish in one season. It is not often that 

 784 



a glut of herrings, pilchards, or other valuable 

 fish, enables the farmer to obtain them at a rate 

 sufficiently reasonable for his land, a purpose 

 for which they have often, however, been em- 

 ployed with the most luxuriant effect on the 

 coasts of Scotland and Cornwall. Sprats, and 

 the fish called five-fingers, are used to a great 

 extent by the Essex farmers ; the demand for 

 these has of late years been fully equal to 

 the supply, although from the evidence given 

 before a Committee of the House of Com- 

 mons in 1833, it seems that during the season 

 more than 400 boats are employed in catching 

 these fish, for the purpose of selling them as 

 manure. 



Manuring with calcareous sand was practised 

 very early in the middle ages by the English 

 farmers. This they obtained not only from 

 inland pits, but from the sea-shore, especially 

 in Norfolk and Cornwall. The privilege of 

 freely taking it from the sea-shore, the West 

 of England farmers enjoyed under a grant 

 from Richard Duke of Cornwall, confirmed by 

 another of 45th of Henry III., A. D. 1261. This 

 is expressed in the preamble of the act of the 

 6th James II. c. 18, A. D. 1609, which says, 

 " Whereas, the sea-sand by long trial and expe- 

 rience hath been found to be very profitable for 

 the bettering of land, and especially for the 

 increase of corn and tillage within the counties 

 of Cornwall and Devon, where the most part 

 of the inhabitants have not commonly used 

 any other worth for the bettering of their arable 

 grounds and pastures." This act, which em- 

 powers the farmers to take this sand free from 

 any toll, was, after being several times renewed, 

 made perpetual by the 16th Charles I., c. 4. 

 This wise encouragement of the use of ma- 

 nures by the legislature of England has not 

 been confined to the sea-land of Padstow har- 

 bour: thus, uncrushed bones passing through 

 a turnpike to be crushed for manure are exempt 

 from toll ; and carts loaded with common ma- 

 nure are equally free; or even when going 

 empty to fetch it ; but this exception does not 

 extend to lime. And in authorizing the con- 

 struction of railways, parliament has carefully 

 provided, that the tolls levied upon the ma- 

 nures conveyed by them shall be much smaller 

 than those demandable for any other descrip- 

 tion of goods : thus, in the Birmingham and 

 Gloucester Railway Act, the .authorized toll is, 

 for manure of all kinds, only one penny per 

 ton per mile ; while coals, &c. are to pay three- 

 halfpence, sugar twopence, cottons and other 

 manufactured goods, threepence per mile. The 

 same proportionate rate of tolls are authorized 

 to be taken on several other railways, such as 

 :he Birmingham and Derby, the Midland Coun- 

 .ies ; and on the Eastern the difference in 

 avour of the farmer is still greater ; for while 

 imestone, sand, and clay are to pay a penny, 

 and all other manures three-halfpence, coals 

 are to pay twopence, sugar, &c. fourpence, and 

 manufactured goods sixpence per mile. 



Saltpetre is, perhaps, the most ancient of all 

 :he saline manures, and its introduction is not, 

 as is commonly believed, a modern improve- 

 ment. It is commended by Virgil as a steep 

 with olive oil, to make the seed-grain swell. 

 To this knowledge of the fertilizing powers of 



