AND RURAL ECONOMIST. 177 



its worst form, which we fear is frequently the case, they at 

 least cause a degree of languor and debility, which embit- 

 ters existence, and in a great measure disquali.Hes for any 

 useful purposes of life. It is a fact that those exhalations so 

 injurious to animal life are the essence of vegetable life, and 

 the volatile substances which offend our senses mid inj ire 

 our health, if arrested in their transit by the hand of skilful 

 industry, may be so modified in the great laboratory of na- 

 ture as to greet us in the fragrance of a flower, regale us in 

 the plum or nectarine, or furnish the stamina of life in sub- 

 stantial viands from the field and the stall of the cultivator. 



If we are correct in the foregoing an important axiom 

 may be adduced, viz. : No putrefactive process oi'gkt to be 

 suffered to proceed on a farmer''s premises, ivithout ^lic adopt- 

 ing some mode to save, as far as possible, the gaseous products 

 of such putrescence. These gaseous products constitute im- 

 portant elements of vegetable food, and a farmer may as 

 well suffer his cattle to stray from his stall, or his swine 

 from his sty, without a possibility of reclaiming them, as 

 permit the principles of fertility expelled by fermentation or 

 putrefaction to escape into the atmosphere for the purpose 

 of poisoning the air, instead of feeding the plants. It is 

 very easy to arrest these particles. A quantity cf earth 

 thrown over the matter in which the fermentation is going 

 on will check its violence and arrest its gaseous products, 

 which will be imbibed by the soil, and afterwards yielded to 

 plants in such proportion as the v/ants of vegetation may 

 require. 



' Fermentation, that destroyer of all organic conformation, 

 is not to be feared by the farmer, if it be conducted and car- 

 ried on in the presence of earth, which fixes and secures the 

 gases as fast as they are liberated. Even the degree of the 

 process i^ a matter of less consequence ; because if the ele- 

 mentary principles are in keeping, and reserved for future 

 usefulness, it is immaterial whether this has happened by a 

 new absorption, or by still holding their original and un- 

 changed form. In his composite hill, [compost heap] the 

 whole animal or vegetable structure may be dissolved, and 

 leave behind no trace of existence, without the least waste 

 of the principles of fertility ; because the ingredients super- 

 added to the dung have become surcharged with them, or, to 

 speak philosophically, fully saturated. We may go farther 

 and state that complete decomposition is desirable in this 

 case, which is so much to be avoided in the farm-yard ; be- 



