484 [Assembly 



lar locality and of similar dimensions. Some of his disquisitions 

 on soils, manures and plants, their constituencies from analysis, 

 what soil may be deficient in, and what manure it may require 

 of the organic or inorganic kind to make plants or particular 

 plants grow thriftily, and mature well upon it, may be highly 

 useful to farmers in every part of our country. The location of 

 Professor Mapes' farm gives him advantages, which farms situ- 

 ated far in the interior, or some distance from the ocean, and our 

 large cities have not. His farm is near the famous salt meadows 

 of Newark, which are inexhaustible in his favorite manure, salt 

 muck ; he can get any quantity of it at comparatively little ex- 

 pense, that it would cost others, living much fui'ther from it, 

 even in the State of New-Jersey. This is, no doubt, a first rate 

 organic manure, and to prepare it, as he describes he has done, 

 must contribute much to the growth of plants and improvement 

 of soils. It would do considerably more in improving these, if 

 it should be conveyed to a distance in the interior, and put upon 

 land that has none or very little benefit from the salt air and 

 salt water products generally, some of which act powerfully as 

 manures. Here it would be new, and would take hold of plants 

 with more force, and these would grow accordingly, being sup- 

 plied with what they most wanted. The farmers far in our in- 

 terior must depend principally upon barn or farm yard manure, 

 they cannot go to the labor and cost of carting very far manures 

 of any kind. Most farms in every locality have on, or near them, 

 fresh water deposits, made from small streams and in swamps ; 

 these, with the scrapings and scourings of ditches, pond holes 

 and stagnant pools, is the only muck within their reach. The 

 oifals, drainage and refuse of the household and homestead, 

 generally everything in the shape of decaying, useless vegetable 

 and animal matter on the farm at large, must be collected and 

 thrown with the muck into the compost heap of the barn yard 

 altogether, if properly preserved, mixed and applied, make an 

 excellent manure, and accessible to the inland farmer. 



Professor Mapes has said considerable in favor of special ma- 

 nures, or such as chemists prepare — soda, chloride of soda, pot- 

 ash, the nitrates, the sulphates, phosphates, and a variety of 

 others, with their different combinations according to the settled 



