62 THE SOIL OF THE FARM. 



cleaned out. Where clay land cultivation is well under- 

 stood, every field is not only plowed in narrow lands be- 

 fore winter, but diagonal furrows are so taken across the 

 slope as to cut over these ridge furrows at intervals of 

 fifty or sixty yards ; and these cross furrows are well 

 cleaned out by the spade, and so connected with an out- 

 fall to the ditch as that it is impossible for any rainfall 

 to pond anywhere in the field. 



CHAPTER VII. 

 HOME MANURE. 



General and Artificial Manure. — Farm- yard Manures: Manaa:ement, 

 Application, Valuation.— Green Manures.— Sheep Fold— Com- 

 post. — Lime. 



We include in this chapter all the home resources of 

 the farm in connection witli this subject ; — Lime also, as 

 being part of tlie system on which the mainteuance of 

 fertility often depends. The auxiliary and artificial 

 manures now generally employed are the subject of an- 

 other cliapter. 



Manures supply the soil w^ith ingredients required by 

 plants which arc deficient in the land cither by reason of 

 the exhaustion conse([uent on annual cro})ping or from 

 original poverty of composition. 



All fertile soils can yield from their stores of natural 

 fertility a certain amount of produce ; and rent, as Sir 

 J. B. Lawes has recently pointed out, may be described 

 as being paid for the riglit of annually removing a cer- 

 tain portion of the fertilizing matter in the soil. If the 

 crop of the year be left on the land, the fertility of the 



