NUTRITIVE MANURES. 55 



me better to cause it to undergo a slight fermentation, in 

 order to dispose the straw or leaves of which it is com- 

 posed to become manure. 



It is necessary, in producing the fermentation of dung 

 and litter, to use certain precautions by which the incon- 

 veniences arising from the usual mode may be avoided. 



Instead of heaping up in large masses the collections of 

 the barn-yard and stables, and allowing them to rot un- 

 covered, and exposed to the changes of weather, they 

 should be placed under a shed, or be at least protected 

 from the rain by a roof of straw or heath. Separate lay- 

 ers should be formed of each clearing of the stables, 

 cow-house, and sheep-pens. These layers should be from 

 a foot and a half to two feet in thickness ; and when the 

 heat, produced in them by fermentation, rises in the 

 centre to more than 95°, or when the mass begins to 

 smoke, it should be turned, to prevent decomposition from 

 going too far. 



Fermentation should be arrested as soon as the straw 

 contained in the heap begins to turn brown, and its tex- 

 ture to be decomposed. To do this, the mass may be 

 spread, or carried into the fields, to be immediately mixed 

 with the soil ; or there may be mixed with it mould, plas- 

 ter, turf, sweepings, &/C. 



When the dung is not of the usual consistency, as is 

 the case with that of neat cattle during the spring and 

 autumn, it ought to be employed immediately, as I have 

 already stated ; but if it be impossible to apply it to the 

 fields whilst recent, it should be mixed with earths or 

 other dry and porous substances, which may serve as ma- 

 nures for the fields destined to receive it. 



Upon nearly all our farms the dung of quadrupeds is 

 exposed to the open air, without the protection of a shed, 

 as soon as it is removed from the stables; and is thus 

 washed by the rains, which carry off all the salts, urine, 

 and soluble juices, and form at the foot of the mass a 

 rivulet of blackish fluid, which is either wholly evaporated 

 or lost in the ground. In proportion as fermentation ad- 

 vances, new soluble combinations are formed, so that all 

 the nutritive and stimulating principles of the dung gradu- 

 ally disappear, till there remain only some weak portions 

 of the manure, intermingled with stalks of straw which 

 have lost all their goodness. 



To remedy as much as possible an abuse so injurious 



