FARMERS' REGISTER— PINE LEAVES &c. FOR MANURE. 



689 



tlierefore, it may be inferred from the reputation of that 

 Journal, as well as from that of the author q uoted, that 

 the scheme there described was actually planned, and 

 merely not attempted, because the execution was deemed 

 detrimental to English interests. The-statement pre- 

 sents a piece of secret history especially deserving the 

 attention of the agriculturists and slave-holders of the 

 Southern States. If the scheme had been attempted, 

 it might have produced great evils — but its failure would 

 have been as signal, as the iniqviity and folly of its con- 

 trivers. If the subject was not so serious, the cool and 

 straight forward manner in wliich the author treats il 

 would be calculated to amuse the reader. With all the 

 intolerance of a bigot and a partizan, he so liates negro 

 slavery, that he deems any means right and proper that 

 oppose it. But your thorough philanthropist is not 

 daunted by the greatest conceivable amount of human 

 misery that may possibly serve to promote his fiivorite 

 seh'emes for increasing human happiness. There are 

 unfortunately many fanatics in our own country, who 

 equal Col. Napier in this respect, as much as they are 

 beneath him in others. 



For this, and for other extracts from the Westmin- 

 ster and Foreign Gtuarterly Reviews, we are indebted 

 to the republication of those valuable periodicals by 

 Condy Raguet, Esq. of Philadelphia, who has thus fa- 

 vored the reading public by furnishing those works at 

 less than half the price of English cojjies, and with more 

 sjieed and certainty, of delivery, than could possibly bt 

 effected from abroad. It is gratifying to learn that the 

 value of this republication has been properly estimated 

 by literary men, and that the public spirited publishei 

 will be rewarded for his undertaking. Articles in the 

 Westminster Review especially (as the foregoing ex- 

 tract for example) are often decidedly opposed to th( 

 opinions, the acts, or the interests, of the people of the 

 United States. Nevertheless) good policy requires that 

 we should know what our enemies say of us, if they 

 are intelligent, and their writings have extensive influ- 

 ence ; and our countrymen will have but small oppor- 

 tunity of being instructed, who are too sensitive to read 

 any thing that is opposed to their self-love and national 

 prejudices, or even to their most correct opinions, and 

 most valued institutions.] 



ON PINE LEAVKS AND OTHER WOODS LIT- 

 TER, FOR MANURE. 



To the Editor of tlie Farmers' Register. 



Amelia, March 15, 1834. 



Since the first number of the Register was pub- 

 lished, I have looked anxiously to see, if some one, 

 qualified by his own experience, would not give 

 us his thoughts on, and practice in, the use of lit- 

 ter from the woods, as a material for manure. But 

 as no one has done it, and as 1 hold, that every 

 thing done by a farmer, for the improvement of 

 his land, (as soon as in his opinion it is worthy of 

 imitation,) should be considered common property, 

 I send you this communication on that subject. 

 And if it should be the means of improving one 

 single acre of worn-out land, I shall consider the 

 time bestowed in writing it, as well spent. 



For three years, I have been in the habit of 

 using pine tags as litter in my iarmyard, and 

 occasionally in my stable, both in the winter 

 and summer ; and have been enabled, l)y that 



Vol. 1.— 87 



means, to manure more than double the land, Avith 

 the same hands, I could have manured with the 

 litter from tlie cro])S, unaided by that resource. 

 xls to the cost of raking, hauling, &c., t consider 

 it so small, as not to be worth mentioning ; for 

 this is done, generally, when the ground is too wet 

 to do any other work. The horses and hands must 

 be led, whether they work or not. The benefit 

 of this, as raw material, must, of course, depend 

 on the distance which it is to be hauled to the 

 farmyard, and the quantity and quality of the ma- 

 nure it makes after you get it there. In the pre- 

 sent state of our country, every farmer above tide 

 water, should think his manure a subject of very 

 great importance. lie should not only use all 

 means to malic it, but should so arrange his fields, 

 as to afford every hicility in applying it. To en- 

 sure a supply of litter, I have kept a body of pine 

 woods within a few hundred yards of my standing 

 pen, into which a single cart, can, in a day, bring 

 twenty loads of litter, when properly attended to. 

 This quantity of litter, with the dung from twenty- 

 five or thirty head of cattle, would top-dress three 

 acres of land for wheat or clover, in lour or five 

 weeks. But if the pen was broken up, or loam 

 I'rom the corners of fences thrown over it, before 

 the litter was put on, the quantity of manure 

 would be much increased : for then the earth would 

 absorb the urine and rain-water, which might oth- 

 erwise pass off — and no top-dressing, that ever I 

 have tried, is better for wheat or clover, than the 

 earth itself so saturated. To dig up loam, and 

 bring it to a standing pen, may be thought too 

 troublesome by many ; but those farmers, who 

 admit the word trouble in their vocabulary, are 

 not likely to do much, in the present state of things, 

 for our w orn-out lands. 



I make three parcels of manure each year. The 

 first of November, or as soon as my wheat is sown, 

 I begin to haul litter to my standing pen, and put 

 my cattle on it. It often happens, that there is no 

 necessity for feeding them, until the first of De- 

 cember ; but whenever it becomes necessary, I 

 begin with straw, shucks, &c., reserving the corn- 

 stalks for a future occasion. During the winter, 

 I take every opportunity of increasing the quanti- 

 ty of litter in this pen, and never haul any out un- 

 til the first of March. I then carry the whole on 

 the field I mean to fallow in the summer, or fall, 

 for wheat, and scatter it on the land. I used to 

 apply this half-rotted stuff to the field I was pre- 

 })aring for corn. I will never do it again. As 

 soon as I begin to take off this winter crop of 

 manure, I bring on t')e corn-stalks ; as they will 

 })erform the double duty of food and litter. In this 

 way, by the last of JMarch, all the manure made 

 during the winter, is carried on the land, and the 

 same pen again deeply covered with stalks and lit- 

 ter from the woods. My reason for using the 

 corn stalks at so late a period, is this ; that in 

 making manure during the summer, we should 

 carefully avoid excessive fei'mentation in fhe first 

 place, and hasty rains passing through the litter, 

 and carrying its most valuable qualities off. With 

 stalks thickly spread, the last injury is seldom felt, 

 and they are less liai)le to loss from the first, than 

 any tiling I have ever used. The cattle are kept 

 on tliis pen until July, when I clean it up and car- 

 ry its contents on the same field. Some short 

 time before the manure is moved from the second 

 pen, I make a pen in the fallo'.v field, or as near it 



