AND HORTICULTURAL REGISTER. 



PUISLISHED BY JOSEPH BRECH. & CO., NO. 52 NORTH MARKET STREET, (Agrichltubal Warehouse.) 



VOL. XVII.] 



BOSTON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, JUNE 26, 1839. 



CNO. 



AGRICULTURAL, 



ON MANURES— THEIR USES AND APPLI- 

 CATION. 



BY WILLIAM CLiTHBFRT JOHNSON, ESCJ. 

 (Concluded.) 



These experiments are entirely confirmed by 

 those which were instituted son;e time since by the 

 authority of some of the German governments, who 

 were anxious to ascertain the truth of the reported 

 value of liquid manures in bringing poor land into 

 cultivation. " This very question," says Dr Gran- 

 ville, "having been submitted a few years since to 

 the consideration of the late Professor Heuibstarit, 

 of Berlin, by the Saxon and Prussian authorities, 

 who were desirous to apply the city drains and cess- 

 pools to the recovery of barren and sandy lands, in 

 the environs of Berlin and Dresden, that eminent 

 agriculturist umlertool;, in conjunction with other 

 learned men and practical farmers, a series of ex- 

 periments, which were carried on for a great length 

 of time, and were varied in every possible way, in 

 order to avoid all sources of fallacy. The result 

 of these experiments Heinbstadt afterwards pub- 

 lished, and they led to extensive agricultural opera- 

 tions, all of which proved successful. Professor 

 Schubler, the writer of the most esteemed and cer- 

 tainly the most able treatise on Agronomia, or the 

 best mode of knowing and treating every species 

 of land, repeated and added to the experiments of 

 Herabstadt, from which he obtained similqff results ; 

 these he published in a tabular form, which '■.is 

 since passed into the hands of all the large practi- 

 cal farmers in Germany, and have formed the basis 

 of instruction on manuring in the hands of the pro- 

 fessors of agriculture, whom many of the conti- 

 nental governments have with infinite advantage 

 established. From that table, concludes Dr Gran- 

 ville, the following facts may be collected : 



If a given quantity of land sown, and without 

 any manure yields three times tlie seed employed, 

 then the same quantity of land will produce — 



Five times the quantity sown when manured 

 with old herbage, putrid grass, or leaves, garden 

 stuff, &c. 



Seven times when manured with cow dung. 



J^ine times with pigeon's dung. 



Te7i times with horse dung. 



Twelve times with human urine. 



Twelve times with goat's dung. 



Tivelve limes with sheep's dting. 



Fourteen times with human manure, or bullock's 

 blood. 



It has been clearly shown by many very accu- 

 rately conducted experiments, that the quantity of 

 nourishment or solid matters absorbed by the roots 

 of plants, is in proportion to the impurity of the 

 water with which they are moistened; thus M. 

 Saussure caused some beans to grow under three 

 different circumstances — the first were placed in 

 distilled water, the second in sand, and watered 

 with rain water, the third were placed in garden 

 mould. The plants produced under these circum- 



stances were actually analyzed, and were found to 

 yield the following proportions of ashes : 



1. Tliose fed by distilled water 3.9 



2. Those fi:d by rain water 7.5 



3. Those grown in soil 12.0 

 And although all attempts to make plants flourisli 

 in the pure earths have failed entirely, when they 

 have been watered with pure water, yet a very dif- 

 ferent result has been experienced when an impure 

 solution or liquid manure has been employed — thus 

 M. Giobert having formed a soil of the four earths, 

 silica, alumina, lime, and magnesia, in the most 

 fertile proportion, in vain essayed to make plants 

 flourish in it when watered with pure water only ; 

 but every difficulty was removed when he moisten- 

 ed these earths with the water from a dung- 

 hill, for they then grew most luxuriantly ; and M. 

 Lampadius still furtlicr demonstrated the chemical 

 power of this drainage, for he formed in his garden 

 compartments of a single earth — pure lime, pure 

 alumina, and pure silica, and planted in each dif- 

 ferent vegetables, watering them with the dung- 

 hill drainage, and he found that they all flourished 

 equally well. The soluble matters (;f a soil in fact 

 constitute its most fertilizing portion, and if by any 

 means the richest mould is deprived of these, as by 

 repeated washings in cold or boiling water, the res- 

 iduum or remaining solid matter is rendered nearly 

 sterile, a fact first shown by M. Saussure, and since 

 confirmed by a variety of experiments of my own ; 

 and that these truths may be still more forcibly 

 elucidated, I will here add iha observations upon 

 the forcing properties of liquid manure, by the late 

 T. A. Knight, Esq., of DowHton, whose loss sci- 

 ence has lately had to deplore, and from whom [ 

 ffratefuUy acknowledge to have received, on many 

 occasions, important advice, and the most zealous, 

 the most cho'ferfully afforded information : to his 

 memory the gardener must wreathe the brightest 

 of his flowers, and the vegetable physiologist dedi- 

 cate his works. 



" I have shown, in a former communication," 

 said the late President of the Horticultural Society, 

 " that a seedling plum stock, growing in a small 

 pot, attained the height of nine feet seven inches 

 in a single season, which is, I believe, a much 

 greater height than any seedling tree of that spe- 

 cies was ever seen to attain in the open soil. But 

 the quantity of enrth which a small pot contains 

 soon becomes exhausted relatively to one kind of 

 plant, though it may be still fertile relatively to 

 others, and the size of the pot cannot be changed 

 sufficiently often to remedy this loss of fertility ; 

 and if it were ever so frequently changed, the mass 

 of mould which each successive omission of roots 

 would enclose must remain the same. Manure, 

 therefore, can probably be most beneficially given 

 in a purely liquid state, and the quantity which 

 trees growing in pots have thus taken under my 

 eare without any injury, and with the greatest good 

 effect, has much exceeded every expectation I had 

 formed. 



"I have for some years appropriated a forcing 



house at Dpwnton to the purpose of experiment 

 solely upon fruit trees, which, as I have frequent 

 occasion lo change, the subjects on which I have 

 to operate are confined in pots. These at first 

 were supplied with water, in which about one-tenth 

 by measure of the dung of pigeons or domestic 

 poultry, had been infused, and the quantity of these 

 substances (generally the latter) was increased fcom 

 one-tenth to one-fourth. The water, after stand- 

 ing fortyeight hours, acquired a color considerably 

 deeper than tlial of porter, and in this state it was 

 drawn off clear, and employed to feed trees of the 

 vine, the mulberry, the peach, and other plants ; a 

 second quantity of water was then applied, and af- 

 terwards used in the same manner when the ma- 

 nure was changed, and the same process repeated. 



"The vine and the mulberry being very gross 

 feeders, were not likely to be soon injured by this 

 treatment; but I expected the peach tree, which is 

 often greatly injured by an excess of manure in a 

 solid state, to give early indications of being over- 

 fed. Contrary, however, to my expectations, the 

 pe;ich tree maintnined at the end of two years the 

 most healthy and luxuriant appearance imaginable, 

 and produced fruit in the last season in greater 

 perfection than I had ever previously been able to 

 obtain it. Some seedling plants had then acquir- 

 ed, at 18 months old, (though the whole of their 

 roots had been confined to half 9 square foot of 

 mould) more than eleven feet in height, with nu- 

 merous branches, and have afforded a most abun- 

 dant and t ',orou3 bloom in the present spring, 

 which has set remarkably well, and those trees 

 which had been n.ost abundantly supplied with ma- 

 nure have displayed the greatest degree of health 

 and luxuriance. A single orange tree was subject- 

 ed to the same mode of treatment, and grew with 

 equal comparative vigor, and appeared to be as 

 much benefited by abundant food as even the vine 

 and the mulberry tree." 



There are many accidentally-made experiments 

 which entirely support those of Mr Knight. The 

 inimcnse growth of grapes by the great Hampton 

 court vine has been supposed to be mainly owing 

 10 its roots having penetrated to an adjoining sewer, 

 and those of the nearly equally celebrated vine at 

 Valentines, in Essex, are known to reach an ad- 

 joining stagnant pool. 



In saving and in preparing liquid manure, tanks 

 will be found exceedingly useful by the cultivator. 

 1 find by a paper with which I was favored from 

 Eastbourne a short time since, that they have been 

 constructed in that neighborhood of flint, stones, 

 and mortar with great economy and success. " At 

 the Eastbourne workhouse, for 14 parishes, a tank 

 has been made 23 feet deep by 11 wide, of the 

 roughest materials, being only flint stones, and 

 though they require more mortar than if they had 

 been regularly shaped, yet only 90 bushels of lime 

 were allowed, including two coats of plaster ; and 

 the workmanship is executed like field work, at 

 ten shillings per 100 square feet, the only essential 

 being that no clay (which worms in time bore 



