334 [Assembly 



The hydrogen unites with the nitrogen, produced, not only by dead 

 animals, but the excrement and ilrine of all animals while living, as 

 well as other putrescent matter; thus forming ammonia, which com- 

 bines with carbonic acid gas, and descends with every shower to the 

 earth's surface, in a soluble form, easily taken up by the roots, and 

 distributed throughout the field. Davy calculates, that a pint of rain 

 water contains only a quarter of a grain of ammonia, that a field of 

 forty thousand square feet, mtist receive yearly, upwards of eighty 

 pounds of ammonia, or sixty-five pounds of nitrogen; for it is ascer- 

 tained that the annual fall of rain water in England, on this extent 

 of surface, is at least 2,500,003 pounds. This is much more nitro- 

 gen than is contained in the form of vegetable albumen and gluten in 

 2,800 lbs. of hay, or 20,000 lbs. of beet root, which would be the 

 yearly produce of such a field; but it is less than the straw, roots, 

 and grain of corn, which might grow on the same surface, would 

 contain; therefore, the farmer must supply the deficiency of nitrogen 

 by using manures containing ammonia. 



Animal manure is chiefly valuable for the ammonia which it pro- 

 duces. Without it, fodder for animals, or vegetables and giain for 

 man, cannot be grown. Manure without stint with nitrogenized 

 substances, and the wheat grown will yield 18 per cent of gluten, 

 will weigh 64 lbs. and produce 50 bushels to the acre. Such has 

 been the experiment I tried upon a wheat field, when the adjoining 

 field, treated in the usual manner, yielded me wheat weighing 56 

 pounds, and 15 bushels to the acre, and probably not more than five 

 per cent of gluten. I placed some of the same nitrogenized com- 

 position upon a barren piece of sandy land, which I had never seen 

 covered with verdure of any description, and in a very short period 

 of time, it was clothed with a dense dark green grass, which tiller- 

 ed v/ell. White clover afterwards came in, which, when it dies, 

 will afford food for a succession of plants ; and the piece may be 

 considered as reclaimed. 



All lands require humus or decayed vegetable matter. When soil- 

 ing cattle is practiced, an opportunity is offered of supplying the 

 farm with whatever it may require. If, upon examination, humus 

 is discovered to a great degree deficient,- cart decayed oak wood, and 

 mix it with your compost heap. Each pound brought in, will ab- 

 sorb from the atmosphere more than 70 times its volume of gaseous 

 ammonia; consequently the quantity of nitrogen will be large. 

 Charcoal possesses the same valuable property in a greater degree. 

 Chemists inform us, that it will absorb 90 times its volume of ammo- 



