346 



Manures. — French Churns. 



Vol. VIII. 



Manures. 



There is one thing settled in farming, 

 stable manure never fails. It always tells. 

 There are no two ways about it. There is 

 here neitlier theory, nor speculation, nor 

 doubt, nor misgiving. " Muck it well, mas- 

 ter, and it will come right," is an old pro- 

 verb. It is considered a fact so well estab- 

 lished, that nobody thinks of disputing it. 

 There is advantage in asking why barn- 

 yard manure never fails. The answer is 

 easy. It contains all that plants need for 

 their growth. If we know then what plants 

 contain, we can easily tell what is in ma- 

 nure. The whole doctrine of manures, 

 then, falls into two plain principles, on 

 which hang all the law and the ^'■profits''' 

 of agriculture. 



1. Plants contain and need certain sub- 

 stances which are essential to their growth. 



2. Manure contains all those substances 

 which plants want. If, then, we would find 

 out what it is which manure contains, that 

 makes plants grow, we must find out what 

 a grown plant contains. Tliis cannot be 

 done without some little, a very little know- 

 ledge of chemistry. Do not be startled, 

 reader, I suppose that you may know nothing 

 of chemistry, no, not even its terms. As a 

 very sensible man, who wrote letters on 

 Botany, ta a young lady, said, to encourage 

 his pupil, it was possible to be a very good 

 Botanist without knowing one plant by 

 name, so is it possible to become a very 

 good agricultural chemist, without knowing 

 little more than the chemical names of a 

 very few substances. You know nothing 

 of chemistry it may be, and as little of law; 

 yet you will go to law, and learn some of 

 its terms by a dear-bought experience. The 

 law terms are harder to learn than the che- 

 mical terms. Now I fear that some persons 

 who have followed me thus far, will shut up 

 the book. It is, say they, all stuff, book- 

 farming, and beyond us. If one may not 

 understand what manure is without this 

 learning, we may as well begin where our 

 fathers ended, and that was where our fore- 

 fathers began ages ago. By a little law, 

 however, picked up as a juryman, or wit- 

 ness, selectman, town-clerk, justicie of the 

 peace, yea, perhaps, hearing an indictment 

 read, men do come to understand what a 

 lawyer means when he talks. So, too, by a 

 little chemical talk, a man may learn what 

 a chemist means when he talks of oxygen, 

 hydrogen, nitrogen, chlorine, and carbon ; 

 potash, soda, lime, — ah, tliese are old friends, 

 the very names make us feel at home again, 

 — alumina, magnesia, iron, manganese, and 

 silex, sulphur, and phosphorus. Here is a 



long list. Long as it is, perhaps it will be 

 thought worth learning, when you are told 

 that these are the names of all the sub- 

 stances found in plants, every substance 

 which they want. Out of these is made 

 every plant. Every part of every plant, 

 from the hyssop on the wall to the moun- 

 tain cedar, contains some or all of these. 

 Be not disheartened. Look over, reader, 

 the list again carefully; see how many are 

 old names of things which you know. Of 

 the fitlteen, you know nearly one half by 

 name and by nature. These are potash, 

 soda, lime, magnesia, iron, sulphur. Per- 

 haps you will add, that you know carbon is 

 coal, or rather coal is carbon. You have 

 heard from some travelling lecturer at your 

 town Lyceum, that oxygen and hydrogen 

 together, form water. That oxygen and ni- 

 trogen form the air we breathe ; that nitro- 

 gen and hydrogen form ammonia, or sal vol- 

 atile, which gives the sharp smell to the 

 smelling-bottle. Besides, the thing has 

 been said so often, that you must have 

 heard it, that chlorine, the substance which 

 bleaches in bleaching salts, united to soda, 

 makes common salt; or if chlorine is united 

 to ammonia, sal ammoniac is formed. Now 

 by changes and combinations among these 

 fifteen things, nature makes everything we 

 find in plants. Many of these are invisible 

 as is the air. The substance called chlo- 

 rine, perhaps you have never seen, but if 

 you ever smelt it you will never forget it. 

 It is often smelt in a piece of bleached cot- 

 ton, when opened in the shops. It gives 

 the smell to bleaching powder used to disin- 

 fect the air, during cholera and other dis- 

 eases. If you could see it, it would appear 

 merely a faint yellowish green air. It is 

 all-powerful on vegetation. As it forms a 

 part of common Fait, say half of its weight, 

 we may dismiss the further consideration of 

 it, by saying, that, in some shape or other, 

 chlorine is universally diffused in soil and 

 plants. S. L. Dana. 



French Churn. 



In a late number of Johnston's Lectures, 

 mention is made of a French Churn, which 

 is made of tin, of a ban*el shape, and is placed 

 in a trough of water, heated or otherwise, to 

 convey the proper temperature to the cream. 

 Many experiments have been tried to ascer- 

 tain this temperature, and it was found that 

 for churning cream in this churn, about 58° 

 Fahrenheit, produced the best quality of but- 

 ter in the shortest time — the time required 

 being from ten to twenty minutes. At 60° 

 the butter would come in five or seven min- 

 utes, but it was soft. 



