42 TALKS OX MANURES. 



is passed through an animal, and produces heat, nothing is added 

 to it. 



I have heard people say a farmer could not make manure unless 

 he kept animals. We might with as much truth say a farmer 

 cannot make ashes unless he keeps stoves ; and it would be just 

 as sensible to take a 4ot of stoves into the woods to make ashes, as 

 it is to keep a lot of animals merely to make manure. You can 

 make the ashes by throwing the wood into a pile, and burning it ; 

 and you can make the manure by throwing the material out 01 

 which the manure is to be made into a pile, and letting it ferment. 

 On a farm where neither food nor manure of any kind is pur- 

 chased, the only way to make manure is to get it out of the land. 



" From the land and from the atmosphere," remarked the Doc- 

 tor. " Plants get a large portion of the material of which they are 

 composed from the atmosphere." 



" Yes," I replied, u but it is principally carbonaceous matter, 

 which is of little or no value as manure. A small amount of am- 

 monia and nitric acid are also brought to the soil by rains and 

 dews, and a freshly-stirred soil may also sometimes absorb more 

 or less ammonia from the atmosphere ; but while t % ,is is true, so 

 far as making manure is concerned, we must look to the plant- 

 food existing in the soil itself. 



" Take such a farm as Mr. Dewey's, that we have already 

 referred to. No manure or food has been purchased ; or at any 

 rate, not one-tenth as much as has been sold, and yet the farm is 

 more productive to-day than when it was first cleared of the forest. 

 He has developed the manure from the stores of latent plant-food 

 previously existing in the soil and this is the way farmers gen- 

 erally make manure." 



