28 A PRACTICAL TREATISE 



own experience he has had frequent occasion to observe, that 

 it is hurtful to remove farm-yard manure while it is in a high 

 degree of fermentation ; for according to all appearance, an 

 essential portion of the most active substances of which it is 

 composed are evaporated when exposed to the air while that 

 process is going on. But, before the fermentation has arrived 

 at its height, or after it has passed, the dung does not seem to 

 lose any thing by exposure to the air ; or, at least, nothing but 

 what it regains by some Other means. 



That an evident advantage attends the spreading of fresh 

 strawy dung upon the surface of the soil during the winter, 

 and leaving it there in that state until the spring ploughing 

 (it being, at the same time, well understood that no declivity 

 of the land allows of its being washed away by the rain) — for 

 this method of covering the ground occasions it to absorb the 

 juices of the dung, and thus renders it not only friable to work, 

 but extremely productive : so much so, that the straw has 

 been afterwards raked off" the land at the close of the season, 

 and yet the soil has appeared as much improved, as that in 

 which the whole of the litter had been buried — an effect which 

 is also apparent in meadow ground which has been similarly 

 treated. Not alone has this occurred in many such instances ; 

 but in others, in which both long and short dung have been 

 epread upon land already soM'n with tares and peas, and 

 though left there during vegetation, have produced the most 

 beneficial effect upon the crops, especially when sown late, 

 and applied to ordinary land of a light and warm nature ; but 

 what appears more extraordinary and difHcult to explain — the 

 land which has been thus managed has evinced a decided 

 superiority in the subsequent crops over ground on which even 

 a larger quantity of dung had been regularly ploughed in. 



That, as one proof of this, in the spring of 1808, rape was 

 sown alon^ with clover upon a \K)ov soil, and was afterwards 

 covered with fresh dung: in the autumn of 1809, tlie clover- 

 ley was broken up, and rye was sown ; the crop of which in 

 the following year was distinguished by its superiority over 

 that of an adjoining field whicli had been dunged upon a sum- 

 mer fallow. Indeed, after a number of comparative experi- 

 ments, made by himself as well as by otlier farmers, it appeared 

 to him beyond all question — however incredible it may seem 

 to those who have not also tried its effects — that dung which 

 has already passed the extreme point of fermentation, not only 

 lo^es nothing by being exposed upon the land, even during the 



