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Agriculture is the most Healthy and Honorable, as it is the most Natural and Useful pursuit of Man. 



VOL. X. 



ROCHESTER, N. Y. — MARCH, 1849. 



NO. 3. 



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MAKING AND PRESERVING MANURE. 



Few things are more stale than the popular talk 

 about making and preserving manure. Every prac- 

 tical man thinks that he understands the art to per- 

 fection : and every babbler in chemical jargon 

 believes that he has attained to the fifth story of 

 rural science when he repeats in fair parrot imitation, 

 the words of Johnston, Liebig, Boussingault and 

 other standard authors. In all this, there is a lack 

 of vigorous, independent reasoning, and of original 

 research, which we can not commend. Let us arouse 

 ourselves to the task of making a little investigation 

 which is not the reproduction of other men's thoughts 

 and language, but our own by legitimate paternity. 



Why is the carcass of a dead sheep which contains 

 thirty pounds of dry matter, better for manure than 

 a like weight of dry grass or other herbage, similar 

 in kind to that consumed by the animal to form its 

 flesh, bones, brain and nerves ? This is a plain and 

 important question ; and one that every farmer's son 

 who is twelve years old should be able to answer 

 correctly, in a moment. Give us the true expla- 

 nation of this phenomenon, and we will proceed a 

 step farther in the same direction. The solution of 

 the problem is this: The atoms in the carcass of a 

 sheep which weigh but thirty pounds have been 

 extracted during the growth of the animal, from a 

 small beginning up to full maturity from at least 

 2,000 pounds of grass or other forage. No 300 

 pounds of dry hay contain the samje quantity of 

 phosphate of lime, sulphur and organized nitrogen, 

 which exists in the carcass named. But this fact 

 would be of no importance, if it were not for another, 

 which is almost universally overlooked in collecting 

 and preserving fertilizers. To bring it out fairly, 

 permit as to inquire: why a pound of bone-earth, 

 (phosphate of lime,) or a pound of available sulphur, 

 or one of nitrogen, is worth more as a manure than 

 a like weight of carbon, pure lime, or oxygen ? In 

 a pound of wheat or corn, there is ten times 

 more carbon and oxygen than of phosphorus, nitro- 

 gen or sulphur. Why then should the last named 

 elementary bodies be so useful, and peculiarly valuable 

 as food for corn and wheat plants ? There are two 

 reasons for this. One is, the extreme scarcity of 

 salts of phosphorus and sulphur, and of available 

 nitrogen, in old, well drained fields, which have been 



often plowed. The other, and more noticeable reason 

 is, the almost universal ignorance that prevails 

 throughout the country in relation to elementary - in- 

 stances in soils, without which not the first kernel of 

 corn or wheat can grow. Every body knows that all 

 kinds of matter in the earth will not do to make 

 bread of; nor will every thing do to make into grass 

 or potatoes. If 100 pounds of common sand, clay, 

 iron or lime would form by any tillage an equal 

 weight of human food, we could all live with little 

 labor and without cultivated reason. A snake can 

 live comfortably in a cage a whole year on a single 

 meal. If our race could thus subsist, we should not 

 be the industrious, inventive, moral and improving 

 beings we now are. 



The time is coming when every child must be 

 taught a knowledge of the things and laws which 

 its Creator has appointed to transform simple minerals 

 into good bread, by the harmonious union of science 

 and physical labor. At present this knowledge is 

 despised; these elements of bread are thrown away; 

 and the natural productiveness of our parent earth 

 is assailed by four or five millions of powerful semi- 

 civilized men, who are eagerly running a race to see 

 who shall coin into grain, tobacco, cotton and other 

 crops, the most of the virgin soil, for exportation and 

 loss to the country. More of the valuable elements 

 of corn and cotton is wasted through ignorance in 

 raising those great staples than is consumed in 

 organizing the same. In this remark allusion is 

 made to the dissolved vegetable and animal mold in 

 soils, and their incombustible salts, which never 

 enter into the composition of the plants in cultivation, 

 but are lost, partly by evaporation, and partly by 

 washing and leaching. When tillage decomposes 

 mold and inorganic matter, if no vegetables are 

 growing to imbibe tho volatile and soluble elements 

 of crops, they are apt to be lost. 



We now return to the consideration of the art of 

 making and preserving manure. Any element, or 

 substance, which can aid in making a ripe and per- 

 fect wheat plant, is a fertilizer. Fertilizers or 

 manures exist in nature in two distinct conditions. 

 The one is, in that of organized atoms, as we see 

 them arranged in the tissues of vegetables — in their 

 seeds and tubers — as in wheat and potatoes: and as 

 we find them in lean meat, fat, brain, bones and 

 membranes. The other condition is that, in which 

 the elements of plants and animals are wholly disor- 

 ganized, or mineralized. For illustration : a slice of 



