352 Manure and the Flower-Garden. 



a well-travelled road are also excellent, and may often be had for the asking. 

 In some localities, peat or meadow-muck is very cheap, and is one of the 

 best possible materials. Collect all these as occasion offers ; and if you 

 throw on the pile wood-ashes, or even the ashes of soft coal, it will be the 

 better. But you need a chemist to prepare them ; and fortunately he is 

 easily to be found. 



A single hog is capable, in the course of one summer, of converting ten 

 cords of the materials mentioned above into good compost ; and, if you add 

 to the rest the litter of the stable, the manure will be excellent. Every day, 

 a quantity should be thrown into his pen, — say from three to five barrow- 

 loads. These he can be taught to mix with great thoroughness, by throw- 

 ing in a handful of corn, and covering it with the last barrow-load. This 

 will cause him to work all day, turning up the mass in every direction in 

 search of the hidden treasure. In dry weather, a few pailfuls of water, or 

 soap-suds if at hand, should be added to assist decomposition. 



This work of throwing in the material should be the special task of one 

 man or boy, who should be required to accomplish it at a fixed hour every 

 morning. It soon becomes a routine, and gives no trouble beyond that 

 belonging to all farm or garden work, which never prospers without the 

 eye of the master. When the hog-pen becomes too full, the contents must 

 be thrown out, and the process repeated. Thus your whole mass of mate- 

 rial is gradually broken up, incorporated, and enriched by the indefatigable 

 quadruped, who, as a reward for his services, is destined to receive nothing 

 but the butcher's knife at the close pf the season ; thereby adding another 

 item to the profits of his thankless proprietor. 



I have used this process for a number of years, gaining a pile of manure 

 valued at from fifty to sixty dollars at an expense of about six dollars for 

 muck, eight for hauling leaves, and four for road-scrapings. The litter of 

 one horse in the stable is thrown in daily ; and the labor expended is that 

 of a boy for half an hour every morning, and occasionally of a man to 

 empty the pen and turn the pile. The quality of the manure is better for 

 my purposes than that of any which can be bought in the neighborhood. 

 The leaves are first used extensively for covering plants in winter, and are 

 procured as much for this purpose as for the other. Francis Park7nan. 



