71 



allowing 25 per cent, to be inevitably lost during the grazing in the 

 day time, about 750 tons per annum for the property, Now ten 

 tons per acre is a very fair dressing, and hence with care from 50 to 

 75 acres could be treated per annum, or the whole garden, at the 

 least, once in ten years. 



Such a proceeding, simple though it appears, involves care 

 in the collection and preservation of the dung which is rarely seen 

 at present. First in its collection, The most feasible and satis- 

 factory way of collecting the manure is to have the whole of 

 the cattle driven at night into an enclosed space or yard, part of 

 which might be roughly covered over or not, as most convenient, and 

 from which they were allowed to go to graze during the day- 

 Adjoining such a yard should be the manure pit, and it would seem 

 hardly too much work for a man to remove and put in the pit 

 daily the dung voided by the cattle during the night time. Such 

 a yard is in operation at some of the gardens I have visited and is 

 a great success, as the coolies have the satisfaction of knowing their 

 cattle safe, and yet the manure is retained and saved without much 

 trouble for the garden. If another man were retained to sweep up 

 all material from the coolie lines daily and put in the manure 

 pit, another source of dung, goats, fowls, &c., would not be lost. 

 As to the preservation of the manure, the pit, which I suggest 

 should be a necessary accessory to every garden, may be formed by 

 digging several feet into the ground, and covering over the hole 

 thus made with the roughest of thatch roofs, say 12 feet from the 

 ground at the lower eaves. Into this every piece of dung, where- 

 soever picked up, would be placed, and so gradually rot during the 

 season, and be ready for application after pruning is done in the 

 cold weather just before the first spring hoeing. Without such a 

 method of covering up the dung from the weather an enormous loss 

 takes place from washing out of the valuable matter by the rain, 

 and although a large loss is unavoidable in keeping manure under 

 the best conditions, yet there is no reason for making this los s 

 greater than it really is. In some recent experiments in Canada, 

 where the rainfall is much less than here, when the loss of manurial 

 matter in exposed and protected manure was compared, it was 

 found that while the exposed lost 540 Ibs, of Organic Matter, the 

 protected only lost 288 Ibs. ; while the exposed lost 14 Ibs. of Nitrogen, 

 the covered only lost 8 Ibs. ; while the uncovered lost 4 Ibs. of 



