ESSEX SOCIETY. 35 



expense of about fifty dollars, and of double the value to the 

 land, of manure for which I have paid heretofore two dollars 

 per load, and hauled it from town. 



I would earnestly recommend farmers to commence the com- 

 post heap, rather than depend upon the towns for their supply 

 of manure. A salt or fresh meadow is accessible to almost 

 every farmer, and this alone, after lying exposed to the sun 

 awhile and dried, then saturated with lye from the soap-boilers', 

 which any one can have about here for the hauling, makes a 

 strong manure. The lye furnishes just the necessary materials 

 to convert the meadow sods into an active manure, viz : potash. 

 I consider a hogshead of lye of more value in a compost heap, 

 than two loads of stable manure. 



Dr. Dana, in his Manual, says : " The value of spent lye has 

 been tested for a series of years, and has shown its good effects 

 on grass lands, for four or five years after its application." 



Indeed, so valuable is spent lye considered by Dr. Dana, as a 

 manure, that he gives a receipt in his Manual, whereby the 

 farmer may himself prepare it, should he live too remote from the 

 soap-boiler. In many towns in New England, the lye is sold to 

 the farmer as high as twenty-five cents per barrel ; and one farmer 

 writes me, that he buys and hauls it eight miles, to mix in his 

 compost heaps. Yet, notwithstanding its fertilizing properties, 

 thousands of hogsheads are allowed to flow in our gutters to the 

 river, the citizen turning up his nose as he passes it, and the 

 farmer crossing it with his team in pursuit of manure, at two 

 dollars per load, when he has meadows that need ditching at 

 home, and materials all about him for a compost heap. 



Loudon, in his Encyclopaedia of Agriculture, says, that the 

 carcass of one dead horse will convert twenty tons of loam into 

 a powerful manure ; and yet how many carcasses are thrown 

 into the Merrimac during the year, or suffered to remain in the 

 pasture, food for birds of prey, and infecting the air for miles 

 around. 



There are few farms in the county, the crops of which may 

 not be doubled by the application of manure. Farmers all ad- 

 mit this ; but then, say they, we cannot afford to pay the price 

 that is demanded for manure. 



