Book VI. COMPOSTS AND OTHER MANURES. 807 



natural poverty ; that the objection made to tliis, viz that the coarse grasses in a few years usurp pos- 

 session of the soil, must be owing to the surface soil not being sufficiently mixed with lime, the lime 

 having been covered too deep by the plough. {Farmer's Magazine, vol. xiii. p. 69.) 



Sect. IV. Composts and other Manures. 



4976. Mixing farm-yard dung, in a state of fermentation, with earth, in which there is 

 much inert vegetable matter, as the banks of old ditches, or what is collected from the 

 sides of lanes, &c., will bring this inert, dead matter, consisting of the roots of decayed 

 grasses and other plants, into a state of putridity and solubility, and prepare it for 

 nourishing the crops or plants it may be applied to, in the very manner it acts on peat. 

 Dung, however, mixed with earth, taken from rich arable fields which have been long 

 cultivated and manured, can have no effect as manure to other land that the same earth 

 and dung would not produce applied separately ; because there is generally no inert 

 matter in this description of earth to be rendered soluble. 



4977. Mixing dung, earth, and qxdck-Ume together, can never be advisable ; because 

 quick-lime will render some of the most valuable parts of the dung insoluble. (See 2290.) 

 It will depend on the nature of soil or earth, whether even quick-lime only should be 

 mixed with it to form compost. If there be much inert vegetable matter in the earth, 

 the quick-lime will prepare it for becoming food for the plants it may be applied to ; but 

 if rich earth be taken from arable fields, the bottoms of dung-pits, or, in fact, if any soil 

 full of soluble matter be used, the quick-lime will decompose parts of this soluble matter, 

 combine with other parts, and render the whole mass less nourishing as manure to plants 

 or crops than before the quick-lime was applied to it. Making composts, then, of rich 

 soil of this description, with dung or lime, mixed or separate, is evidently, to say no 

 more of it, a waste of time and labour. The mixture of earths of this description with 

 dung produces no alteration in the component parts of the earth, where there is no inert 

 vegetable substances to be acted on ; and the mixture of earth full of soluble matter with 

 dung and quick-lime, in a mass together, has the worst effects, the quick-lime decom- 

 posing and uniting with the soluble matter of the earth, as well as that of the dung ; 

 thus rendering both, in every case, less efficient as manures, than if applied separately 

 from the quick-lime, and even the quick-lime itself inferior as manure for certain soils, 

 than if it had never been mixed with the dung and earth at all. {Farmer s Magazine, 

 vol. XV. p. 351.) 



4978. Mining dung in a state of fermentation with peat, or forming what in Scotland 

 are called Meadowbank middens (2241.), is a successful mode of increasing the quantity 

 of putrescent manure. The peat, being dug and partially dried, may either be carted 

 into the farm-yard and spread over the cattle court, there to remain till the whole is 

 carted out and laid upon a dunghill to ferment ; or it may be mixed up with the farm- 

 yard dung as carted out. If care be taken to watch the fermenting process, as the 

 fire of a clay-kiln is watched^ a few loads of dung may be made to rot many loads of 

 peat. Adding lime to such composts does not in the least promote fermentation, 

 while it renders the most valuable parts of the mass insoluble. Adding sand, ashes, 

 or earth, will, by tending to consolidate the mass, considerably impede the progress of 

 fermentation. 



4979. Bone manure. Crushed bones were first introduced to Lincolnshire and York- 

 shire, about 1800, by a bone merchant at Hull; and the effect has been, according to a 

 writer in the British Farmers Magazine, vol. iii. p. 207., to raise wild unenclosed sheep- 

 walks from 2s. 6d. or 5s. to 10s. 6d. or 20s. an acre. The quantity at present laid on 

 is 12 bushels per acre drilled in, in the form of dust, with turnip seed. The turnips are 

 fed off with sheep, and succeeded by a corn crop, and by two crops of grass. It seems 

 to be generally admitted, that bone dust is not beneficial on wet retentive soils, as con- 

 tinued moisture prevents decomposition ; but in all descriptions of dry soils it never fails 

 of success. On the poor soil, or chalk or lime-stone of the woolds of Lincolnshire and 

 Yorkshire, the turnip crops are said to equal those of any part of England ; and the barley, 

 though coarse, to produce a greater quantity of saccharine matter than even the brightest 

 Norfolk samples. (Brit. Farm. Mag. vol. iii. p. 208.) 



4980. The Doncaster Agricultural Association appointed a committee, in 1828, to make enquiries, and 

 report the result of them, on the use and advantages of bones as a manure. The report is full of interest, 

 and highly satisfactory as to the great value of this species. The following is a summary of deductions 

 from the details collected : 



1. That on dry sands, lime-stone, chalk, light loams, and peat, bones form a very highly valuable ma- 

 nure ; they may be laid on grass with great good effect j and, on arable lands, they may be laid on fallow 

 for turnips, or used for any of the subsequent crops. 



2. That the best method of using them, when broad-cast, is previously to mix them up with earth, dung, 

 or other manures, and let them lie to ferment. 



3. That if used alone, they may either be drilled with the seed or sown broad-cast 



4. That bones which have undergone the process of fermentation are decidedly superior to those which 

 have not done so. 



5. That the quantity should be about 25 bushels of dust, or 40 bushels of large, increasing the quantity 

 if the land be impoverished. 



6. That upon clays and heavy loams, it does not yet appear that bones will answer. 



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