184 THE COMPLETE FARMER 



count, were thirty-six feet square and four feet deep, sur- 

 rounded on all sides by a wall ; and the solid contenis were 

 one hundred and ninety-two yards. Having selected the 

 nearest spot where he could find loamy earth, and this he 

 always took from the surface of some field under cultivation, 

 he proceeded to fill it; and found that, with three men and 

 two horses, he could easily accomplish twenty-eight cubic 

 yards per day; and the whole expense of transporting the 

 earth did not exceed four pounds sixteen shillings sterling, 

 [about twenty-two dollars.] When the work was complete, 

 he levelled the surface of the heap in a line with the sewer 

 which conducted the urine from the interior of the building, 

 on purpose that it might be distributed with regularity, and 

 might saturate the whole from top to bottom. The quantity 

 conveyed to it he estimates at about eight hundred gallons ; 

 but as this calculation was founded partly on conjecture, for 

 he measured not the liquor, it will be better and more in- 

 structive to furnish and proceed on data that are certain and 

 incontrovertible. The urine was supplied by fourteen cattle, 

 weighing about thirty-four stone [four hundred anu seventy- 

 six pounds] each, and kept there for five months on fodder 

 and turnips. The contents of the pit produced two hundred 

 ani eiT^hty-eight loads, allowing two cubic yards to be taken 

 out in three carts ; and he spread forty of these on each acre, 

 so that this urine in five months, and from fourteen cattle, 

 produced a compost sufficient for the fertilization of seven 

 acres of land. He states farther, that he had tried this e:»pe- 

 riment fur ten years, and had indiscriminately used in the 

 same field either the rotted cow-dung or the saturated earth; 

 and in all stages of the crop, he had never been able to find 

 any perceptible difference. But what is still more wonder- 

 ful, he found his compost lasted in its effects as many years 

 as his best putrescent manure ; and he therefore boldly avers, 

 that a load of each is of equivalent value. 



' It appears, then, that in five months each cow discharges 

 urine which, when absorbed by loam, furnishes manure of 

 the richest quality and most durable effects for half an acre 

 of ground. The dung-pit, which contained all the excre- 

 mentitious matter of the fourteen cattle, as well as the litter 

 employed in bedding them, and which was kept separate for 

 the purpose of the experiment, only furnished, during the 

 same period, two hundred and forty loads, and these, at the 

 same rate, could only manure six acres. The aggregate 

 value of the urine, therefore, when compared with that of the 



