ORGANIC MANURES. 179 



Without clover, and without returning the greater part of the early 

 product to the soil, the greatest value of marling will not be seen. 

 A small proportion of the clover may be used for mowing and 

 grazing ; and in a few years even this small share will far exceed 

 all the grass that the fields furnished before marling and the limit- 

 ation of grazing. This limitation, which is at first objected to as 

 lessening the food of grazing stock, and their products, within a 

 few years becomes the source of a far more abundant supply of 

 both. 



During the first few years of marling, but little attention can 

 (or indeed ought to) be given to making putrescent manures, be- 

 cause the soil much more needs calcareous manure ; and three or 

 four acres may generally be supplied with the latter, as cheaply as 

 one with the former. But putrescent manures cannot anywhere be 

 used to so much advantage as upon land after being made calcare- 

 ous ; and no farmer can make and apply vegetable matter as ma- 

 nure to greater profit than he who has marled his poor fields, and 

 can then withdraw his labour from applying the more to the less 

 valuable manure. After the farm has been marled over at the 

 light rate recommended at first (say 200 to 300 bushels), every 

 effort should be made to accumulate and apply vegetable manures ; 

 and with their gradual extension over the fields, a second applica- 

 tion of marl may be made, making the whole quantity, in both the 

 first and second marling, 500 or 600 bushels to the acre, or even 

 more ; which quantity might have been hurtful if given at first, 

 but which will now be not only harmless, but necessary to fix and 

 retain so much putrescent and nutritive matter in the soil. 



The above injunction, that " every effort should be made to ac- 

 cumulate and apply vegetable manures," should not be limited, as 

 most new improvers would be apt to do, to the mere economical use 

 of the vegetable materials for manure furnished by the crops, and 

 those only as prepared by being first used as litter for animals. 

 Not only these, but every other vegetable and putrescent material 

 that is accessible should be saved and applied, and even without 

 any intermediate process of preparation, and at any time of the 

 year, and state of the fields, provided no growing or commencing 

 crop be thereby molested. Surplus straw, not needed for food or 

 litter, is most valuable and cheaply applied as top-dressing to clover 

 or other grass ; though it is an inconvenient and troublesome ma- 

 nure if soon after to be ploughed under. Leaves from the woods 

 of the farm may be used most profitably in the same manner, to 

 the full extent of the resources offered. And though the manuring 

 operations on the Coggins Point farm have not yet been extended 

 beyond the last-named putrescent material (and of that, not to 

 much extent), it is believed that other and abundant sources yet 

 remain untried and unproductive on that and most other farms, and 



