482 [Assembly 



and superior flavor, when the next vine but one, ten feet distant^ 

 of the same variety, manured with solid compost, bore an inferior 

 quality in every respect. Applied to strawberry plants at the 

 time they were forming their blossom buds, the whole strength 

 of it was appropriated to the production of fruit, instead of 

 leaves ; and when the berries came to perfection, the irrigated 

 plants produced magnificent fruit, infinitely superior to those 

 not so treated. The effects of liquid manures are immediate on 

 plants, and admirable upon thoroughly drained land, which I 

 imagined would have precisely the contrary effect, from the fact 

 that they are most thoroughly washed by every heavy rain. Still 

 their fertility increases annually, and when the water passes from 

 the drain it is pure and transparent. 



This shows plainly that liquid fertilizers do not escape, but are 

 chemically retained by the soil. I have noticed when the water 

 from top dressed lands falls into the main ditches, it is always 

 turbid with the manure carried with it. Fallow lands, manured 

 in the fall with liquids, will produce an admirable crop of grain, 

 sown in the spring, showing that its effects remain in the soil, 

 undisturbed by fall rains and winter frosts. The lands in the 

 vicinity of Edinburgh, wiiich have been enriched for the last fifty 

 years with sewerage water from that city, are said to yield a num- 

 ber of green fodder crops annually, and the collective weight cut 

 upon a single acre, is reported to have reached eighty tons. With 

 turnips, cabbages, carrots, mangel wurzel and potatoes, with gar- 

 den productions, such as onions, peas, beans, and with every 

 variety of fruit, quicker and heavier crops have been obtained by 

 applications of liquid manure, than by any other process. In 

 Flanders, the farmers have discovered, by experiment, that a coat 

 of liquid human ordure, has produced fourteen times the quan- 

 tity of grain sown, where horse manure has only yielded ten; 

 he human excrement employed was, to that of horse manure, 

 as one to five ; therefore, one ton of the Flemish, produced a 

 larger yield than five tons of stable manure. In Flanders, the 

 land is plowed and harrowed until it becomes perfectly pulveru- 

 lent, when the liquid manure is put over. 



