OF PLANTS BY MANURING. 67 



How quickly does manure operate^ and how long 

 does its action continue ? 



It is obvio\is that the farmer must be desirous to 

 know whether the principal effect of a compost, 

 which he thinks of applying to his land, may be an- 

 ticipated in the first, second, or third year, or at a 

 still later period. In common practice, great value 

 is usually attached to the prolonged operation or en- 

 durance of manuring ; and this is undoubtedly cor- 

 rect in the case of a manure which, like lime, exerts 

 in the first year of its application an energetic action 

 on the soil. On the other hand, in a manure which, 

 in the majority of cases, does not begin to work ac- 

 tively until it has lain for one or two years in the 

 ground, it is assuredly incorrect to consider this kind 

 of endurance as a ground of special preference, for 

 capital is invested in the land, of which during one or 

 two years the interest, and indeed still more than the 

 interest, are lost. The calculating farmer, who, like a 

 merchant, accurately computes what a manure may 

 have cost him, and the return, — in what space of 

 time, and upon what surface, it may have given him 

 a return, — will certainly subscribe, with entire con- 

 viction of its truth, to the following proposition : The 

 quickest-working manures are the most profitable^ for 

 they increase the business capital of the farmer. 



An English agriculturist relates, that, forty years 

 before bone-manuring became general in England, 

 ten • or twelve hundred- weight of bones in coarse 

 pieces were applied to the acre ; subsequently, only 



