AMMONIA IN MUCK. 99 



of the Connecticut State Agricultural Society. He was at the 

 time, and is now, I believe, chemist to that society. He found 

 in the muck-beds of the State, almost uniformly, large amounts 

 of ammonia. The same is true of the muck-beds of the whole 

 country, and it is altogether probable that, in the thirty-three 

 samples presented to him, by no means the richest beds were 

 found. The average of ammonia in the beds was 1.37 per cent. 

 Some of the largest figures are 2.24, 2.71, 2.55, 2.92, 3.54, 2.28, 

 2.04, 2.14. That is in the natural peat. In the thoroughly 

 dried peat the amounts are very much larger — 3.10 per cent., 

 3.12, 4.89, 4.56, (in two or three cases,) and in one case 5.41, 

 per cent., making an average in the dried organic matter of the 

 peats of 3.14. I mention this to show what folly it is for 

 farmers to purchase, at high prices, fertilizers for manure, 

 when such supplies are not exhausted. 



2. Next the farmer should search his locality — examining 

 the wastes of manufacturing establishments, slaughter-houses, 

 woollen-mills, breweries, &c. We are by no means suflficieiitly 

 familiar with the very rich products of many of these establish- 

 ments. The farmer who buys the brewers' grains finds that he 

 is enriching his land very essentially. The hop-waste, which is- 

 not fed, and almost all the waste of a brewery, are of ^ery great 

 manurial value. And so we can hardly take any branch of our 

 manufactures, except perhaps those in which the nitrates are 

 so mingled with poisonous metallic salts that they cannot be 

 used, but we shall find them rich sources of neglected manurial 

 wealth. 



3. These sources being exhausted, he should seek the mar- 

 ket, and is at once met by the questions, What shall he pay ? 

 What can he afford to pay ? Two very different questions. 

 The farmer is obliged to pay the market price. That does not 

 settle his need. A farmer may apply one hundred pounds of 

 guano, worth five dollars, to an acre of buckwheat, and obtain 

 a crop worth four or five times what the land would have 

 yielded without the guano. Should he, then, have paid twenty 

 dollars, he might still have been the gainer, and well satisfied. 

 So it is with every other manure. The agricidlural value de- 

 pends upon the condition of the soil, and the use which each 

 farmer makes of the material. The market vahie — that is, the 

 fair price — depends upon the sources of supply available to the 



