136 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Why not plunge your manure into the celkir and haul it there 

 in a solid mass, and use it in a green state? For some pur- 

 poses, this is well enough, I have no doubt. I think the best 

 chemists will agree with me, that the earth is a tremendous 

 laboratory. Th3 capaci'y which the soil has of dissolving 

 and dividing what is put into it for its own purposes and 

 uses, is exactly analogous to the capacity of the human sys- 

 tem to take up and divide and use the food that is taken into 

 it for specific purposes. I have no doubt, that, under certain 

 circumstances, green, solid barn-yard manure can be econom- 

 ically introduced into some crops. For instance, I think it 

 can be introduced into the corn-crop. I am sure that the 

 best way to raise corn is to plant it on new land, with the 

 sod recently turned over, with barn-yard manure turned in, 

 and a small quantity put in the hill. I am sure that in that 

 way you can raise the greatest corn-crop. Why? Because, 

 during the sixty days of hot corn weather, the earth and the 

 heat are doing exactly what the farmer would have been 

 doing iu his compost-heap ; and when the corn requires that 

 manure, the earth, the »un and the heated air are busy prepar- 

 ing the food for its use. Experience has taught me that this 

 mode of cultivating corn is a good one. But, experience has 

 also taught me that for most crops well composted and well 

 decomposed manure is by far the most useful. 



And now, in decomposing our animal manures, we should 

 not forget that while the manure is largely diminished by 

 decomposition, the fertilizing power of the manure is largely 

 increased, and never, until it is decomposed, is the manure 

 fit for the food of the plant. Some of the most interesting 

 experiments that have been made in modern times were made 

 by the Royal Agricultural Society of England, and published 

 in their transactions, setting forth exactly how much barn- 

 yard manure was increased in value by decomposition ; a 

 series of experiments analogous to those admirable investi- 

 gations now being carried on at the Agricultural College at 

 Amherst, in the State of Massachusetts, and which, I am 

 happy to say, are fast placing that college where it belongs, 

 in the front rank of the agricultural institutions of the country. 

 The result of all these careful experiments was this : In the 

 first place, that all the soluble salts of manure were largely 



