No. 6. 



Report on Manure, 



193 



ferent materials for the purpose of making 

 manure, and tiie results have not produced 

 a conviction favourable to the system as a 

 means of improving the soil. The expense 

 of carting out and mixing the different sub- 

 stances, added to that of removing them to 

 the fields, is a very considerable item ; that 

 it will pay the expense your committee are 

 not disposed to doubt, for any plan of manur- 

 ing, the most awkward and expensive, ap- 

 pears to be better than none. 



The late George Simmons owned a farm 

 about five miles from Wilmington: he im- 

 proved one of his fields by drawing manure 

 from the city, which cost him, delivered, 

 three dollars per cart load, and spread it at 

 the rate of twenty loads to the acre, making 

 sixty dollars for the manure, which was more 

 per acre than his farm would have sold for, 

 yet the increase in the crops justified the 

 expense. The question, therefore, is not 

 whether a certain application of manure is 

 profitable, but whether the expenditure of 

 labour and capital in any particular applica- 

 tion of manure, such as making composts in 

 New Castle county, has advantages great 

 enough to recommend it as a preferable 

 means of improving the soil. To this ques- 

 tion, your committee answer in the negative; 

 they do not believe that any known plan of 

 making compost has advantages sufficient to 

 recommend it to the farmers of New Castle 

 county as the most profitable means of ferti- 

 lizing the soil. But we do not wish, by this 

 opinion, to prevent making composts after 

 the plan recommended by John Jones, (whose 

 letter to the committee we subjoin to this 

 report.) Gather up every kind of decompo- 

 sible refuse, leaves, twigs, scrapings from 

 the wood pile, straw, chaff, old hay and 

 weeds, and, if the expense is trifling, draw 

 and upon clay, and clay upon sand, but take 

 all direct to the fields and turn it under the 

 nd. 



Keeping of stock, which has hitherto been 

 considered the best means of enriching tlie 

 soil, has, from the results of some well-at- 

 tested facts, led to the opinion that it is a 

 cure way to impoverish it. Your committee 

 believe that second crop clover, hay, straw, 

 and chafl^ will make more manure, left upon 

 the land, than when passed through the ani- 

 mals. 

 i William Polk, of Cantwell's Bridge, a 

 I strong minded, sensible man, who has obtain- 

 " ed a large stock of practical information on 

 this subject, says, he increased his corn crop 

 ten bushels per acre by turning in the second 

 -rop clover, over other parts of the field 

 which was mowed for the purpose of obtain- 

 ing seed. 



Your committee believe that the manure 



of New Castle county is greatly diminished 

 by the burdens of animals, under which the 

 land seems to groan. It is the great object 

 of every prudent man to investigate and in- 

 quire into the circumstances that surround 

 him, and accommodate his practice to the 

 most profitable employment of his labour and 

 capital; and the interest of no one is greater 

 than that of the farmer in carrying out this 

 principle. 



In the far West, and in the interior of the 

 large States, where land is cheap, and almost 

 inexhaustible in fertility, the raising of ani- 

 mals may be the most profitable course; it is 

 an indirect way of transmitting their heavy 

 crops of grain to a good market; but in New 

 Castle county, where a few cents per bushel 

 will carry their grain to the highest market, 

 a calculation of profit and loss will show a 

 different result. The vegetation consumed 

 in raising the thousands of cattle and hogs 

 in New Castle county, would make double 

 the profit in grain if permitted to die and 

 decompose upon the soil. A yearling calf, 

 not stinted in winter feeding, well sold, will 

 bring as much as it would have done if sold 

 to the butcher at six or eight weeks old. A 

 fat hog will sell for about the sum that the 

 corn he has eaten is worth, so that the vast 

 amount of vegetable matter consumed by 

 those animals is a total loss, a drawback 

 upon the manure heap. Your committee, 

 therefore, suggest the propriety of testing 

 some of those facts in relation to stock im- 

 poverishing the soil instead of making com- 

 posts. 



There is a field of eight or nine acres of 

 corn within one and a half miles of Wilming- 

 ton. Some of the acres have been measured, 

 and found to yield more than ninety bushels 

 of sound corn; it has not been limed, nor 

 received more manure than other land upon 

 the farm, that has never produced over sixty 

 bushels of corn to the acre. It was manured 

 last spring with a dressing of unmanufactur- 

 ed poudrette, a powerful manure it is true; 

 but it is nothing more than is applied every 

 year to much of the land around Wilming- 

 ton, without any such results. The cause 

 of this extraordinary crop, therefore, must be 

 found in some other quarter than the appli- 

 cation of manure drawn upon the soil. This 

 field has not had a hoof pastured upon it for 

 six years; it was mowed every year, and the 

 second crop allowed to die upon the ground. 

 The clover soon worked out and was supplied 

 by a strong, deep sward of green and other 

 grasses. 



In grain growing districts, and such, in 

 the opinion of your committee, is New Cas- 

 tle county, most of the inner fences may be 

 dispensed with, which is an item of great 



