MANURES. 185 



846. A single pound of woollen rags is worth more 

 for the soil than the paper-maker would give for two 

 pounds of clean linen shreds. No one would throw 

 away the last; the first are almost always thrown 

 away. Their value, as compared with barn-yard ma- 

 nure, as estimated by good judges, is as forty to one. 

 Old boots and shoes, could they be reduced to pow- 

 der, would be the very b^st of fertilizers ; but as they 

 cannot, and as they are slow to be decomposed, the 

 best thing to do with them is to put them into the 

 bottom of the holes in which trees are to be set, or 

 under an asparagus bed, if one is to be prepared ; or 

 what is still better, they may be dug in about the 

 roots of grape-vines. Those accumulations of scraps 

 and parings of leather, which are seen by the shops 

 of shoemakers and harness-makers, are valuable for 

 the same purpose, especially for preparing the ground 

 for grape-vines. Under an asparagus bed or a grape- 

 vine, they act as a slow and constant feeder to the 

 plants, lasting many years. 



847. No dead animal, as a cow or a horse, should 

 ever be drawn ofP and left to pollute the air. Bury 

 it so deeply on the surface of the ground, with loam, 

 that no effluvia will escape, and in a year the whole 

 pile of earth thus thrown up, say 10 cart-loads, will 

 be equal to the best barn-yard manure. If a little 

 lime be put around the animal, and a bushel or two 

 of ashes mixed with the earth as thrown on, the 

 whole heap will become a great nitre-bed. Every 

 particle of earth in the whole mass, and it may be 

 large, will become impregnated with nitrate of lime 



