498 [AsSEMBL¥ 



The disintegration of organic substances in the soil, is has- 

 tened by the presence of the rootlets of growing plants, which 

 remove by their absorption, the atmosphere of carbonic acid. Id 

 which decay immersed tiiem. There is scarcely a trace to be 

 found ol the form of a straw or a corn stalk in the manure that 

 has lain for a summer under a growing crop, while the manure 

 that has been summered over in the yard, retains much of its 

 form ; even those portions of corn stalk that have been thrown to 

 the surface by the plow, are delayed in their decomposition by 

 this accident. There is nothing gained then in point of time, by 

 allowing manure to lie over a summer to decay, as some farmers 

 do. By such a process, its heating power is also lost. We know 

 the immensely stimulating power that decaying manure possesses 

 in a hot bed over the growth of plants, and it is a principle now 

 well established, that the same aggregate amount of heat is 

 evolved by decomposition; whether that heat is eliminated in a 

 time short enough to make it sensible, or whether the process is 

 delayed as it is through a season under a crop of growing corn. 

 The ditlerence between the manure of a farm in the crude condi- 

 tion, and the manure of the same farm in a well rotted condition,, 

 is a crop of corn in favor of the crude materials. In all compost- 

 ing processes there is a waste. We may put enough earth and 

 plaster, and muck, etc., into the heap, to absorb all the evolved 

 gases; but the earth of the field would have done as much, we 

 may even delay the decomposition in the heap, so that the tempe- 

 rature shall not rise appreciably; yet there is so much heat irre- 

 coverably lost. It may be advisable, sometimes, to submit to this 

 waste, to extinguish the seeds of vile weeds, to set some substance 

 like tan into a ferment, that would not have decayed of itself, or 

 to meet an exigency by discounting our next year's manure. But 

 it is a hard shave to pay, one that American farmers cannot live 

 by. There is land enough, and to spare, in this country, that 

 may be made to manure itself; and our policy must enlarge 

 beyond the limits of European ideas to meet this state of things j 

 this ten shillings an acre and dollar a day condition of ours. We 

 often see processes of composting urged upon us, as " Bommer's 

 method " was advocated as ways of making manure, but it is not 

 in the power of man to make one atom of manure ; he has never 



