ON EXPERIMENTS ON MANURES. 107 



whole well mixed and thrown into a compact heap, there to 

 remain until next spring, when I intend to spread it on the 

 land, plough it in, and plant with potatoes and corn. 



Here I have a pile of 150 loads of powerful manure, at an 

 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 ev- 

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

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

 ers', which any one can have about here /or the hauling^ makes 

 a strong manure. The lye furnishes just the necessary mate- 

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

 potash. I consider a hogshead of lye of more value in a com- 

 post 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 ma- 

 nure at two dollars per load, when he has meadows that need 

 ditching at home, and materials all about him for a compost 

 heap. 



Louden, in his Encyclopedia 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 Mcrriniac during the year, or suffered to remain in the 

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

 around. 



