116 FERTILIZERS. 



would be necessary to give intelligent replies, I have no 

 doubt but that they would unanimously concede to me the 

 right to put in this plea for mercy. I suppose the able men 

 at the head of our experimental stations will hardly thank 

 me ; but I would, sotto voce, suggest to my friends, that, if 

 questions must be asked, they switch the vast freight on to 

 their track, and so send them to abler heads and freer hands 

 than mine, to those whose business it is to make such 

 investigations as would supply the facts needed in the an- 

 swering of this class of questions. Such as I may receive, I 

 propose to pigeon-hole until some future time, when I may 

 get out a book on barn manure and the various wastes 

 used as manures (in which, living near great manufactur- 

 ing centres, I have chanced to have a large experience), 

 and, either in the body of such treatise or in its closing 

 chapters, reply to my correspondents,, 



