HOW ASHES WORK. 45 



deep ; and when you have pumped it all clear one day, there 

 will be just as much over your land the next morning as there 

 was the day before, for the air is constantly changing. Keep 

 tapping it. Put on the mineral manure. 



There is another very important thing in regard to ashes, 

 which is seldom referred to. One of the most essential things 

 that we want is nitrogen, in such a form that the plants can take 

 it up. Here is an atmosphere forty-five miles deep, as we say, 

 but it is really a great deal more than that, and a very large 

 portion of this atmosphere is nitrogen, the very thing we want 

 to make manure of. We want to get this nitrogen into the 

 plants, and if our friend Goessmann could only give us some rec- 

 ipe by which we could take this nitrogen from the air and put 

 it into our manure readily and cheaply, we should not be obliged 

 to go to the Chincha Islands for guano. We want something 

 that will hold every particle of ammonia we have in the soil 

 and that shall fix it as it conies from the air. There is more or 

 less set free in the air from decomposition. If you have ashes, 

 if you have any alkali or any caustic body present where de- 

 composition is going on, instead of the ammonia set free pass- 

 ing off, you have more oxygen taken from the air, and you 

 have nitre formed. You know that in old revolutionary times, 

 they used to go out and dig up the soil under barns and houses, 

 leach it, and get out the saltpetre that was in it, to make gun- 

 powder. You can do it any day. Dig up the earth under any 

 old barn, where the urine settles, and where the rain does not 

 fall, and you will find it rich in nitre, which we want for plants. 

 Throw ashes round a privy, where the urine is spreading, and 

 where the water cannot come down, because the nitre is very 

 soluble, and you will see, in the summer time, sharp crystals 

 shooting, and you will find that these are crystals of nitre. 

 And oftentimes, in stables, you will see the plastered walls cov- 

 ered with a coating that looks like frost. It is nitre. Decom- 

 position has been going on ; there is ammonia, and there is 

 nitre formed. Now, if there is any decomposition of this kind 

 going on, instead of its passing off in the form of ammonia, it 

 is changed into nitre, and you have it there in the soil. 



You see, therefore, how valuable ashes are. You see that, 

 in the first place, they give back to the soil the very thing the 



