54 



generation are very fine cattle, in point of size, docility, condition, and 

 work. I have seen the importations of this stock made by the Ohio 

 Company ; and it seems impossible to imagine animals of more perfect 

 symmetry and beauty ; or of better promise in point of thrift and 

 condition. They may however suit far better the luxuriant meadows 

 of Ohio and Kentucky than our bleak and short pastures. 



MANURES. 



Much and increasing attention is paid throughout the county to the 

 saving of manures and the formation of compost. Vastly more re- 

 mains to be done. In many parts of the county, cellars are consid- 

 ered a necessary appendage to the barn, where the manure is sheltered 

 from the sun ; and, by some of the most careful, from the external air 

 likewise. A Danvers farmer, on whose good judgment I place great 

 confidence, expresses his strong conviction, that the value of his 

 manure is doubled in a closed cellar, in comparison with it under the 

 former mode of exposure to the sun, and air, and rain. In most of 

 these cases the barn is placed on a side hill ; the cellar is high enough 

 to load in and turn the team and cart ; and a trap door is in the barn 

 floor, so that bog-mud, litter, or other refuse may be easily thrown 

 in to be formed into compost by the store hogs, who are put there 

 to work, and who faithfully earn their living. In two places I found 

 provision made for saving all the liquid manure from the stalls and the 

 barn yards. It was conveyed by gutters into a capacious cistern, 

 from which it was occasionally pumped into a watering cask, like that 

 used in the streets of cities, and distributed on the grass ground. 

 This was done with great advantage. The liquid manure of a large 

 herd of cattle, could it be properly husbanded, would be of equal 

 value as the solid manure. The subject of saving manures, and 

 collecting and compounding them, is a matter which cannot be too 

 strongly pressed upon the attention of farmers. It is the very life- 

 blood of successful agriculture. 



The subject of the application of manures, whether in a perfectly 

 green and unfermented, or in a decomposed state, has been matter 

 of much inquiry among the Essex farmers. The general impression 



