OIL-CAKE. 237 



heaviest clay bottoms, provided an excessively dry 

 weather does not happen during the first period of 

 vegetation. Very moist and very dry fields or mead- 

 ows seem least adapted to this manure. 



To attain the greatest possible certainty, the same 

 course should be adopted with this substance as with 

 bone-dust; that is, some guano should be added, par- 

 ticularly when it is intended to use it in manuring 

 summer crops. So, too, it is very judicious to com- 

 bine it, when employed as an auxiliary manure, with 

 stable-muck, in order to excite a more energetic pu- 

 trefaction. For the same reason, a mixture of oil- 

 cake, guano, and earth is certainly better suited for 

 top-dressing meadows, etc., than oil-cake alone, and 

 more especially in all those cases where the manure 

 is not applied until the spring. In many places the 

 joint employment of oil-cake and lime has produced 

 excellent results. 



As regards the crop for which oil-cake may be 

 most advantageously used, it may at once be infer- 

 red from the statement of its composition, according 

 to which it contains all the substances plants need 

 for their nourishment, and the most valuable of these 

 (nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash) in consider- 

 able quantity, that it is adapted to all plants ; and 

 this has been already verified by the results of expe- 

 rience. In Saxony it has proved beneficial for grain 

 and oily crops, no less than for grass, potatoes, etc. K 

 in this respect one kind of crop is to be placed above 

 all others, it might perhaps be the oleaginous plants 



