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MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



ture of salt to arrest fermentation. These uses 

 fully take up all the straw which I grow. I 

 think the methods employed in preparing the 

 manure from the " boarded '' cattle deserve men- 

 tion. First the liquid manure flows into large 

 tanks ; Mow them is another, which I call the 

 mixing tank, for in it the manure is diluted with 

 water to any degree which the .state of the wea- 

 ther may require, the rule being that, in propor- 

 tion to the increase of temperature must be the 

 increase of dilution ; ?. e. the hotter the weather 

 the weaker should be the manure applied. In 

 order to avoid the expensive and often injurious 

 water-cart, I have laid down over the highest 

 part of my farm a main of green elm pipe, of 2 

 inches diameter, bored in the solid wood ; at 

 every 100 yards distance i.s an upright post.bored 

 in the same manner, with a nozzle. A forcing- 

 pump fixed at the mixing tank discharges along 

 these pipes, buried 2 feetin the ground, the fluid 

 with a pressure of 40 feet ; of course it rushes up 

 these pierced columns, and will discharge itself 

 with great velocity through the nozzle ; to this 

 I attach first of all 40 yards of ho.se, and there- 

 with •water all the grass which it can reach. To 

 the end of this ho.se another 40 yards of hose are 

 attached, and a still larger portion of the surface 

 is irrigated, and so on for as many 40 yards as 

 are required. When enough has been irrigated 

 at the first upright, the nozzle is plugged, and 

 the fluid is discharged at the next 100 yards dis- 

 tanced column, and so on. For this application 

 of the hose I am entirely indebted to that most 

 able man, Mr. Edwin Chadwick : the green elm 

 pipe is my own contrivance. The co.st of the 

 prepared canvas hose, which was obtained 

 from Mr. Holland, of Manchester, was Is. ayard 

 — the wooden pipes cost me only Is., and being 

 under-ground they will be most enduring. By 

 an outlay of ^^30 I can thus irrigate 40 acres of 

 land ; and see how inexpensive, compared with 

 the use of the water-cart and horse, the applica- 

 tion. A lad of 15 works the forcing-pump ; the 

 attaching the hose and its management require 

 a man and a boy. With these, then, equivalent 

 to two men, I can easily water two acres a day, 

 at the rate of 40 hogsheads per acre of the best 

 manure in the world : I say licsf, because all 

 chemists will assure you that the liquid contains 

 the principal nitrogenous and soluble salts, and 

 therefore is far more valuable than the dung, 

 and it is plain enough to every man, though he 

 be no chemist, that plants can only take up the 

 manure in a liquid form. The principal use 

 which I make of the hose is to water the clover, 

 and. above all, the noble, but this day much-de- 

 cried, Italian rye-grass. How hard Mr .Wood- 

 ward was upon its soft sweet herbage! Yet 

 his own excellent principle, that you must carry 

 back to the land an equivalent for what is taken 

 away, may be successfully alleged in defence of 

 this most productive and nutritious of all grass- 

 es. It is certainly true that if you cut and carry 

 aw^ay Italian ryegrass, and do not also carry 

 back the manure made in eating it, you will not, 

 be able to grow wheat after it. But from my own 

 observation I know that if after each cutting the 

 hose immediately follows, you may cut it with- 

 out wrong to the land as often as you like, and 

 an amount of fodder will be obtained which no 

 other plant can approach. It comes the earliest, 

 and grows the longest of all the grasses ; and I 

 feel confident that, with such appliances as I 

 have mentioned, you may secure fifty tons per 

 annum of this milk-giving, fat-producing, mus- 

 cle-making grass. I can refer to Mr. Dickin- 

 son, of Curzon-street, as an authority for grow- 

 (832) 



ing at least this weight of green food, and I be- 

 lieve far more. That you caii cut it, by the help ■ 

 of liquid manure, six times a year, admits of no 

 doubt. With regard to the manure made by 

 sheep, as previously described, you will readily 

 perceive its value if you reflect that when you 

 give a flock in their house 20 tons of Swedes 

 and their tops, you have minus only the increase 

 of their hone and wool made during the three 

 months of their happy confinement, all the inor- 

 ganic and most of the organic ingredients of the 

 crop being under the boards; in fact you may 

 say that on the boards j-ou have a fatted flock, 

 and below the boards yet 20 tons of Swedes and 

 their tops. I think that a good deal of misappre- 

 hension prevails respecting this mode of shed- 

 feeding sheep, for you hear frequent comparison 

 made on the superior system of feeding off crops 

 in the fields. I have no doubt that in the sum- 

 mer months even fattening sheep will " do well" 

 out of doors.and at the same time fertilize and con- 

 solidate the land ; but I speak of feeding oflT winter 

 crops by sh.'iep which you wish to fat : and here 

 I cannot think that the two systems admit of com- 

 parison, so superior are the results of the house 

 and board system. But the conditions under 

 v^'hich an animal is to be reared are quite differ- 

 ent from those which you would observe in lay- 

 ing on fat. In the one case, exercise is ab.solute- 

 ly necessary; in the other case, the quieter and 

 more still the creature is kept the better. Briefly, 

 then, my own practice, which science surely 

 justifies, is this : the greater proportion, about 

 two-thirds of my best roots arc carted to the 

 sheds, and given to the animals preparing for 

 the butcher; whereas the tops and the smaller 

 turnips are fed off by my breeding flock on the 

 land, assisted by oil-cake and corn wlien neces- 

 sary, and thus the land is rendered firm, and the 

 ewes are kept in healthful exercise. Lastly, I 

 must advert to the treatment of the dung made 

 by the cattle and pigs. That on the boards is 

 hourly swept down, and wheeled away to a 

 long covered shed ; contiguous to this is an- 

 other shed containing a large store of burnt 

 earth and other ashes. The dung is worked up 

 with the ashes, and therewith are mixed the other 

 manures, dissolved bones, soot, powdered chalk, 

 &c. This, about 8 or 10 cart-loads per acre, is 

 carted to the field ready for turnip .sowing. The 

 manure is drilled in by one oftho.se that deliver 

 moist manure, and thus 8 acres can be got over in 

 a day drilled on the flat. If the field is very poor 

 the drill goes over 4 acres in the morning with- 

 out seed ; in the afternoon the same quantity is 

 again deposited in the same rut.s, and the seed 

 upon this double discharge. The advantage of 

 this is, that the dung is never exposed to the 

 drying of the sun or air ; that the seed being de- 

 posited over a moist bed, germinates immedi- 

 ately in the driest season, and cares not for the 

 fly, though for the prevalent grub it is cer- 

 tainly no remedy. The pig manure I consider 

 the best of all ; because one-half of the corn I 

 feed them on is in the shape of beans, which 

 contains the best mineral ingredient for grow- 

 ing Swedep, as I have endeavored to set forth 

 in my " Lecture on Manures." These, gentle- 

 men, then, are the principal points of the prac- 

 tice which have brought me into that pleasing 

 embarrassment of which I spoke before, and 

 which I wish may befall you all — more manure 

 than you can safely put on your arable land. 



Dr. Playfair remarked that so much had al- 

 ready been said about produce that be wished 

 more particularly to draw attention to the fact 

 that a great variation existed in the nature and 



