92 ECONOMY OF FARMING. 



in a long course of years, we may reckon with tolerable certainty how great 

 the mass of manure would be which one must employ for the purpose. 



34. We can therefore compute beforehand how great the production 

 will be if a greater mass of manure has been employed than usual. 



How the amount of production on plough-land stands in respect to greater manur- 

 ing, we have already shown in Vol. I. § VII. d. 14. p. 180, to which reference may 

 be had. 



[The remarks and estimates referred to. have already been quoted in the preceding 

 paragraph (31), found on p. 80—92 of this prt sent work.— Tr.] 



35. But because stall-manure is a substance which only gradually dis- 

 solves in water, and because in the first and second years the greater part 

 of the same reaches to this state ; therefore the harvests of the first and 

 second years after manuring must be proportionally greater than of the third 

 and fourth. 



It is therefore usual in estimates of husbandry, where the cost of the manure is 

 charged to the fruit benefitted, to assume that every time manure is brought on the 

 field it loses, in the 1st year, ^ 



« « 2nd " i 



" " Sd " i 



" « 4th " -iV 



[Veit's estimates corresponding with the above have already been given (31) p. 

 82. Speaking of the decrease of the power of the soil according to the quality of the 

 manure, he observes, Vol. I. p. 342 : " Manure escapes from the soil according to the 

 decree of its being dissolved. As to its quality of solubleness in any case, the farmer 

 wifl decide who prepares it, according to his object, to obtain a more rapid or tardy^ 

 effect. In most cases of farming, it is intended to have an effect lasting a number of 

 years, by which one can obtain many harvests on the same field, from one manuring. 

 For this object it is usual to employ stall-manure, if the litter is brittle and divisible 

 by the past fermentation. In this half-rotten state, the manure in the first year of 

 vegetation will exert its greatest activity by the easily-dissolved animal substances ; 

 but also a great part of its mass, and indeed the solid vegetable substances of the 

 litter and remains of fodder, will operate in the 2d year, and a considerable remnant, 

 also, even to the 3d year's fruit. If one wishes to make the eflicacy of the stall-ma- 

 nure yet more gradual, he may employ it before it begins to ferment, or hold this back 

 till he employs it, in which case indeed in the first year the manuring powers devel- 

 ope themselves in less measure, but yet exert themselves efficaciously in the 3d and 

 4th years. 



But if it is the object to have the full and greatest effect of the manure in the first 

 year of the fruit, he will only employ fermented well decomposed stall-manure, or it 

 may be kinds of manure in the form of powder, or of a liquid, which usually give only 

 a little strength for the 2d year's fruit, and therefore must be repeated in a shorter 

 space," — Tr.] 



36. The substance of manure will draw from the sod, through all plants, 

 in an inverse ratio, compounded of the absolute quantity of their similarly- 

 formed product, and their relative power to assimilate inorganic matter. 



In manures are contained all the elements of the vegetable material, and thus, as 

 the manure is found in a state to be dissolved in water, the plants suck it in, and the 

 organs existing in the interior of plants, first separate those substances which are 

 needed for the formation of the constituent parts of the plants. The greater, there- 

 fore, the quantity of material that can be dissolved which is in the soil, the larger will 

 be the product in plants and parts of plants of all kinds; only in the consumption of 

 manure, a difference is shown, because after a harvest equal in weight of peas and 

 wheat, not an equal amount of humus has been taken from the soil. It seems to me 

 that we explain in this way, much more simply and correctly, the consumption of 

 manure, than if we suppose with Thaer. that the same is proportioned according to 

 the amount of the product of plants, and their capacity for nutritition. 



