ON MANURES. Id 



large extent of ground under turnips, at the rate of 28, 40, 

 and larger quantities alternately, without creating any visible 

 difference in the crop. This, however, may be perfectly cor- 

 rect, so far as regards one or two crops, for it has been found 

 that, when used in large quantities, they have rendered the 

 land extraordinarily productive during a great length of time, 

 of which we find the following instances in the Doncaster 

 Report: — 



1. On a field, part of which was boned forty years ago, the 

 crops were, on that part, during fifteen or sixteen succeeding 

 years, visibly better than the remainder, although the land 

 was all of the same quality, and the part not boned was ma- 

 nured with farm-yard dung. 



2. In another case, about three acres of light sandy land 

 were dressed, in 1814, with 150 bushels of bones per acre; since 

 which time the land is said to have never forgotten it, but is 

 nearly as good again as the other part, farmed precisely in 

 the same way, with the exception of the one application of 

 bones.* 



We learn, also, from experiments at Kew, that although 

 they yield a certain supply of nourishment to plants the mo- 

 ment they are capable of receiving it, yet that is done so 

 gradually as to furnish only a regular and moderate supply: 

 reasoning upon which, it is to be presumed, that as a large 

 quantity does not produce the efl:ect of forcing a crop in pro- 

 portion to the amount supplied, neither can it be so soon ex- 

 hausted by the gradual consumption of the smaller quantity. 

 This application may therefore be perfectly consistent with 

 good husbandry, if applied to any amount, however large; 

 though, as regards the farmer's purse, the expenditure of the 

 outlay is a different question. The extent of their fertilizing 

 quality is greater upon grass-land, under cattle, than upon 

 arable. Valuers estimate the allowance to a quitting tenant, 

 by supposing the effect of bones upon tillage and meadow- 



* About sixty years ago, a farmer is also said to have obtained a forty- 

 year's lease of a tract of poor land, in a higli situation near Rochdale, in 

 Lancashire, on which, after fencing and draining it, he erected a bone-mill, 

 and began manuring the ground at the rate of 100 to 130 bushels of bones 

 and dust per acre. The consequence of which was, that in a few years he 

 let off more land than paid the rent of the whole, and retained a large farm 

 in his own hand. The Correspondent of the Quarterly Journal of Agricul- 

 ture, from whom these details are taken, says, ''that one acre woultf sum- 

 mer a cow of large size, and that some fields were cropped with oats ten or 

 fifteen years in succession ; yet that it is surprising to see the herbage which 

 the land still produces, both as to quantity and quality, near one haK being 

 white and marl clover.— N. S., vol. iii. p. 715. 



