THE PROPERTIES OF MANURE. 



By R. L. Pell, Pellham, N. Y. 



There is not a subject of more vital importance to the country 

 than manure. Without it in some shape, the agricuUurist cannot by 

 any possibility succeed in his avocation. It never was intended by 

 the Deity that man should annually take from the soil its produc- 

 tions and make no return. Such has been the case in Virginia. 

 The tobacco grower has successively taken from his fields the tobacco 

 plant, root and branch. Mark the consequence. A curse has pur- 

 sued him — his fields have ceased to produce — he has become impo- 

 verished — and at this moment, vast tracts that have once been fer- 

 tile are now barren wastes. 



If our farmers paid proper attention to their interests, there ts 

 scarcely one among us who has not in his immediate vicinity, or on 

 his very farm, almost every requisite to grow the cereal grains, and 

 instead of producing fifteen bushels of wheat to the acre, might ob- 

 tain sixty. We all have straw, hay, weeds, stalks, &c., which con- 

 sist of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, alkaline and earthy salts, 

 all indispensable manures, yet they are all sold from our premises, 

 except the weeds, which are permitted to grow, come to maturity, 

 sow their seeds and go to waste. If you would grow wheat crops 

 on your ground continuously, all that is necessary is to return the 

 straw, if to it you add the ingredients, small in quantity, taken away 

 by the grain, phosphates, &c. Thus you give to the land every che- 

 mical ingredient, from potash to chlorine, that the ensuing crop re- 

 quires, as the straw and grain contain, by analysis, precisely the 

 same chemical ingredients, and like produces like. 



Let every farmer accumulate his weeds, straw, refuse stalks, leaves, 

 muck, swamp mud, sand, clay, night soil, charcoal dust, coal ashes, 

 the excrements of his horses, horned cattle, pigs and fowls, not ne-/ 

 glecling the liquid manures in his yard, under cover, and when de- 

 composed and properly incorporated, he has a capital on which to 

 commence hi^; agricultural operations that will carry him through 

 every difl&culty. The liquids are, in nine cases out of ten, allowed 



