20 A PRACTICAL TREATISE 



cattle-sheds, sufficiently capacious to allow a space rather 

 broader than the platform upon which the beasts lie, but sunk 

 somewhat lower, and to which the dung may be swept up. 

 When thus covered, its decomposition is effected by the aid 

 of its natural humidity, and if left for three or four weeks, its 

 fermentation will be completed. The time at which it is 

 subject to the greatest evaporation of its volatile particles will 

 then be past, and it may be immediately carried upon the land. 

 Its quantity will be certainly less decreased, and its quality 

 better preserved, by being left under the cover of a shed, and 

 there will also he a saving of labour in its removal ; but not 

 alone should the neatness and order of stalls be taken into 

 consideration, but also the cost. Theoretic people, when ad- 

 vocating new schemes in husbandry, rarely give themselves 

 the trouble of calculating any thing Ijeyond their effects upon 

 crops, without due regard to the expense of their cultivation ; 

 and if in this case the additional charges of the erection of tlie 

 building, together with the repairs rendered necessary by the 

 steam arising from the dung, were to be reckoned, they would 

 probably be found to exceed the value of the proposed advan- 

 tages of the plan. While the opinions of practical men on 

 this and other modes of management are so unsettled and dis- 

 cordant, those cannot be deemed imprudent who adopt that 

 side of the question which is the most consistent with economy. 

 We will, however, admit that it would be an improvement if 

 reservoirs for the drainage of yards were so constructed that 

 their contents might be pumped up, and sprinkled over horse- 

 litter, whenever its too great dryness occasions any danger of 

 its becoming fire-fanged ; for, whether in the yard, or carried 

 out to the dung-heap, it should never be allowed to become so 

 dry as to lose the power of fermentation ; and if there should 

 be no portion of it sufficiently moist to allow of the dry part 

 being mixed up with it, so as to prevent that risk, it should be 

 sprinkled regularly when shook up. A watering-pot with a 

 large rose will be found to answer the purpose. 



There can, indeed, be nothing more appropriate to tlie 

 subject than the observation of Sir Humphry Davy, ' that when 

 dung is to be preserved for any time, the site of the dung-hill 

 is of great importance. In order to have it defended from the 

 sun, it should be laid under a shed, or on the north side of a 

 wall. To make a complete dung-hill repository, the floor 

 should be paved with flat stones, a little inclination being 

 made from each side towards the centre : in the centre there 



