406 AGRICULTURE. 



generally. The practice in the best vineyards, of burying the leaves 

 of each vine at its root, every autumn, is not only one of the most 

 successful modes of manuring that plant, but one founded in the 

 latest discoveries in science. 



The most economical mode of making manure, in most parts of 

 the country, is that of using muck or peat from swamps. Though 

 worth little or nothing in its crude state, it contains large quantities 

 of the best food for trees and plants. No cultivator, who has it at com- 

 mand, should complain of the difficulty of getting manure, since he can 

 so easily turn it into a compost, equal in bulk to farm-yard manure. 



The cheapest mode of doing this, is, undoubtedly, to place it in 

 the stalls underneath the cattle for a few days, and then lay it up 

 with the barn-yard manure, in the proportion of one part muck to 

 six or eight parts manure. The whole will then ferment, and be- 

 come equal in value to the ordinary product of the barn-yard. But 

 a much more practicable mode for horticulturists who are not all 

 farmers with cattle yards is that of reducing it by means of ashes, 

 or lime slaked with brine. 



As we have already pointed out how to use ashes, and as we 

 think, after what we have observed the past season, the latter mode 

 gives a compost still more valuable for many trees than ashes and 

 muck, we recommend it to the trial of all those forming composts 

 for their orchards and gardens. The better mode is to throw out 

 the peat from the swamps now, or in winter, expose it to the action 

 of the frost, and, early in the spring, to mix it with the brine-slaked 

 lime, at the rate of four bushels to the cord. It should be allowed 

 to lie about six weeks. The good effects of this compost, when ap- 

 plied as a manure to the kitchen garden, or mixed with the soil in 

 planting trees, are equally striking and permanent. 



We cannot let the opportunity pass by without saying a word 

 or two about that much lauded and much abused substance guano. 

 Nothing is more certain than that, in Peru and England, this is the 

 best of all manures ; or that in the United States, as it has hitherto 

 been used, it is one of the worst. Now, as a substance cannot thus 

 wholly change its nature in these different countries without some 

 good reason, we are naturally led to inquire, what is the secret of 

 its success ? 



