MANURES. 



MANURES. 



absorbed, by mixing with it a portion of newly 

 prepared carbon, in the finest possible state of 

 division, than which no known substance has 

 such great powers of absorption of all gaseous 

 matters like those which abound in and impart 

 the disagreeable odour to night-soil. These 

 purifying powers of charcoal have been long 

 known : the medical man applies it in putres- 

 cent cases, the housewife rubs it powdered over 

 her tainted meat, and the sailor chars the in- 

 side of his water-casks for a similar purpose. 

 The presence of the carbon in the manure thus 

 prepared is valuable in two ways; gradually it 

 combines with the oxygen of the atmosphere, 

 forming in the state of carbonic acid gas the 

 food of plants ; and, at the same time, all the 

 gaseous matters of putrefaction with which it 

 is saturated are thus preserved, stored up, as it 

 were, for the service of the roots of the culti- 

 vator's crops ; nothing is lost, the emission of 

 the gases from the slowly dissolving charcoal 

 being so gradual as to be almost, if not en- 

 tirely, imperceptible to the senses. 



Such, then, are the principal facts already 

 ascertained with regard to the fertilizing uses 

 of night-soil and other decomposing manures, 

 in their ordinary form, and when reduced by 

 various processes to such a state of dryness, 

 so as to be easily applied in the state of pow- 

 der to the soil by the drill. In thus investigat- 

 ing the advantages of rendering manures more 

 concentrated, I have been induced chiefly to 

 confine my attention to one only of the organic 

 manures, night-soil, because, from its nature, 

 cheapness, and powerful effects, it affords, per- 

 haps, greater facilities for accomplishing this 

 important object than any other excrement, and 

 is, besides, more commonly wasted than any 

 other fertilizer. I hardly deem it necessary to 

 make any remarks upon the importance of all 

 researches which tend to the better understand- 

 ing of the powers and best mode of employing 

 manures, for with such investigations is inse- 

 parably connected the gradual and steady in- 

 crease of the productiveness of our country. 

 Such improvements, too, are full of interest, not 

 only to the cultivator, but to everyone to whom 

 the vegetable kingdom is an object of import- 

 ance. And, as I have elsewhere had occasion 

 to remark, it is hardly possible, in reflecting 

 upon the essential use of organic fertilizers in 

 the production of our food, to avoid being im- 

 pressed with the wisdom and beneficence of 

 the Creator, in thus making decomposing nox- 

 ious organic substances the nutriment of vege- 

 tation, rendering the very animal substances 

 which the grass once formed, its food when 

 dead. This interchange of their elements, so 

 essential to each, is equally incessant and re- 

 markable, the death and decomposition of the 

 one ever imparting fresh food and life to the 

 crher. Thus the same gases which are at one 

 moment constituting the noxious products of 

 putrefaction, are in the next existing in the ex- 

 quisite aroma of the flower. These facts are, 

 indeed, too apparent to escape our observation; 

 and the marvellous rapidity and advantage to 

 as of these magic vegetable combinations can- 

 not but excite both our curiosity and our grati- 

 tude. (Quart. Journ. of Jlgr. vol. x. p. 142.) 



MANURES, Hi^r^y of. See the heads ASHES, 

 782 



FARM-YARD MANURE, BOXES, OHALK, LIME, 

 GREEN SAND, &c. The application of manures 

 became one of the sustaining arts of life as 

 soon as man was ordained to earn his bread 

 by the sweat of his brow. From that time to 

 the present, the art of manuring the soil has 

 been steadily improving; and there is no doubt 

 but that it will go on advancing, as long as 

 mankind continue to increase. 



The first manure used by man, as soon as 

 he began to dwell in fixed habitations and till 

 the land around him, would, of course, be that 

 of his domesticated animals ; but he is natu- 

 rally averse to labour, and consequently this 

 operation would be postponed until the rich 

 alluvial soils, which would be certainly the 

 first selected, were exhausted by over-cropping, 

 and by the increase of population the poorer 

 descriptions forced into cultivation ; the occu- 

 pier of the land would naturally avoid, if pos- 

 sible, the trouble of spreading the dung of his 

 farm-yards over his fields. Instances of this 

 kind have not been wanting in recent periods 

 in the newly settled rich prairies of America, 

 in which many cases have occurred where, in 

 consequence of the enormous accumulation of 

 dung around the farmer's sheds, he has been 

 induced to remove his btfildings to a new spot, 

 rather than undertake the greater labour of re- 

 moving the masses of fermenting manure which 

 so deeply encumbered his old farm-yard. The 

 first rude mode in which this was conveyed to 

 the land, was naturally by hand-baskets, or by 

 sledges or barrows ; the use of beasts of bur- 

 den was necessarily a later agricultural im- 

 provement; and, at first, there is no doubt but 

 that manure was carried on their backs to the 

 fields, as is even now practised in the moun- 

 tainous districts of the Continent, and in some 

 parts of the north of England, and in Devon- 

 shire. Dung-carts were a much later improve- 

 ment ; and the preparation of compost heaps, 

 and exciting and regulating their fermentation 

 by the use of the fork, has been a much more 

 modern discovery than is usually believed. 



Irrigation, which is a mode of applying the 

 weakest of liquid manure, by the use of the 

 waters of rivers, is of a very ancient date. It 

 has been used from a very early period in Italy 

 and the East; in fact, in many warm, sandy 

 countries, as in China, a copious supply of 

 water is an essential requisite for the success- 

 ful cultivation of the earth. Water-meadows 

 were first constructed in England, on a tolera- 

 bly regular system, about the termination of the 

 17th century. Some of the most excellent of 

 those in Wiltshire, such as those in the Wyley 

 Bourne, were made between the year? 1700 

 and 1705; and about half a century afterwards, 

 the celebrated Craigintinny meadows were 

 formed near Edinburgh, by which the town 

 drainage is rendered available in the produc- 

 tion of the most luxuriant crops of grass. 

 These meadows were considerably enJarged 

 towards the end of the 18th century, and again 

 in 1821. These might be very advantageously 

 imitated in the neighbourhood of other large 

 towns. 



Amongst the Egyptians and Israelites, whose 

 climates were hot, a plentiful supply of mois- 

 ture was necessary for a healthful vegetation ; 



