306 



Importance of Manure. 



Vol. IX. 



Importance of Manure. 



The progress of agricultural improvement 

 brings with it an increased demand for ma- 

 nures of easy transport. The supply gradu- 

 ally falls short of the demand, and their 

 market value rises until they reach a kind 

 of famine price ; at which the corn they can 

 be made to raise, barely repays the cost of 

 applying them. This high price, which at 

 first appears to be an unmitigated evil, leads, 

 however, to good in many ways. Perhaps 

 the simplest and most intelligible way of 

 treating our present subject will be, to fol 

 low in their order the successive effects or 

 improvements to which this high price na- 

 turally gives rise. 



In the first place, it causes all known ma 

 nures to be eagerly sought for and collected 

 The home dealer is stimulated to search for 

 them in every quarter, and each bone-mill 

 employs its staff of humble collectors to 

 perambulate the towns and villages. For- 

 eign and larger dealers spring up in the 

 seaports. Our east coast puts the whole 

 sea-board of Europe under requisition — 

 whole fleets of merchantmen from the west, 

 skirt the Irish shores, or, crossing the At- 

 lantic, bring their cargoes of bones from the 

 United States; and even to Buenos Ayres 

 and Monte Video, suggest a new article of 

 export, in addition to the hides and tallow of 

 their numberless cattle. Such is, perhaps, 

 the earliest national advantage which springs 

 from high prices and increased demand. 



It is interesting enough to mark how 

 agriculture and commerce thus mutually 

 aid each other — how the wants of one coun- 

 try impart a new value even to the refuse 

 substances of another, and afford a new em- 

 ployment to its idle population. But it is 

 more interesting still to observe how such a 

 traffic, commenced with a view to the bene- 

 fit of our own farming interest, reacts upon 

 the minds of the agricultural population in 

 those distant countries — awakening them to 

 new desires, and leading them to increased 

 skill in the art by which they live. Bones, 

 for example, they come to think, may be 

 useful at home, if it is worth the while of 

 English merchants to bring them from so 

 great a distance. How are they to be used, 

 they ask, where and when applied, to what 

 crops, on what soils, and after what prepa- 

 ration ■? Such questions called forth by de- 

 grees a vast amount of practical informa- 

 tion, the diffusion of which has in Sweden 

 already given rise to the complaint, that 

 bones are not to be obtained by the home 

 farmer, because of the high price offered by 

 the exporters to England; and in the United 

 States of America, to the reflection, that 



they are surely worth more for home con- 

 sumption than the seven or eight dollars a 

 ton which the English agents pay for them. 

 How striking to see the awakening intelli- 

 gence of a fevf thousand agriculturists in 

 our own island, thus rousing a spirit of in- 

 quiry, and actually pushing forward the art 

 of culture in the most remote parts of the 

 world ! 



A second and no less important conse- 

 quence of this high price of manure, is the 

 saving to which it leads of such as were 

 previously wasted. It is only the more skil- 

 ful farmers who use these comparatively 

 costly substances, in any considerable quan- 

 tity. The less skilful cannot afford to use 

 them. Their land is not in proper condi- 

 tion, perhaps because it is undrained, or 

 they apply them after a wrong method, or 

 at a wrong season ; so that if by way of ex- 

 periment they are tempted to try them, they 

 suffer an actual money loss, and they are 

 long deterred from employing them again. 

 Nevertheless, the absolute value of manures 

 of every kind rises in the estimation of the 

 farmer, as that of portable manures increases. 

 He comes to see that every waste of manure 

 is an actual loss of money; and when satis- 

 fied of this, the slowest begin to move, and 

 the most wedded to old customs to think of 

 deviating from the methods of their fore- 

 fathers. 



The instructed look with amazement when, 

 on the borders of the Roman Campagna, they 

 see whole hills of dung, the long accumu- 

 lating refuse from the stables of the post- 

 house, or when, on the breaking up of the 

 winter's frost, tliey see the yearly collec- 

 tions from the farm-yards floated away on 

 the ice of the Wolga, almost literally real- 

 izing the times of the Augean stables. We 

 never dream that anything half so barbarous 

 could by possibility happen among ourselves; 

 and yet a visit to a hill-farm in Northumber- 

 land, may show us the same winter accu- 

 mulations emptied purposely on the side of 

 a brook, that the waters may carry them off, 

 or into some neighbouring hollow, where 

 they are least in the way, and have been 

 permitted to collect for entire generations. 

 Such palpable waste is seldom seen, indeed, 

 in the lower country, where intercourse is 

 greater, and where knowledge and public 

 opinion spread more widely, and exercise a 

 more immediate influence; and yet the no 

 less serious waste of the liquid from our 

 farm-yards is still too widely prevalent, even 

 in our better cultivated districts, and among 

 our more improving and intelligent farmers. 

 Within the last few weeks, we have walked 

 over the farms of the first practical farmer 

 of the Tyne-side, and of the most celebrated 



