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NEW ENGLAND FARMER 



JULT 19, 1843. 



From Transactions of the N. Y. State Agticultural Soriety. 



PRIZE ESSAY ON THE PREPARATION 

 AND USE OP MANURES. 



BT WILLIS GAVLOBD. 



Of all the pursuits to which mankind, from ne- 

 cessity or inclination, have devoted themselves, 

 there is none iiinro honorable — certainly none 

 n)ore useful — than that of agriculture. To pursue 

 this business successfully, knowledge, extensive 

 and varied, is required ; for, although a man may 

 succeed by following the beaten paths of his pre- 

 decessors, occasions will frequently arise, when 

 the end desired may be attained by methods 

 much shorter than those usually adopted, if the far- 

 mer IS able to form and apply them. It is here 

 that science has, within a few years, rendered the 

 most essential aid to agriculture. Sometimes, rea- 

 soning from well known effects to their causes, the 

 agricultural chemist lias placed in the hands of the 

 farmer the means of producing results, always de- 

 sirable, but which, under the older systems of 

 farming, with his utmost care, he frequently failed 

 of obtaining. Again, taking (veil established facts 

 in animal or vegetable physiology as liis starting 

 point, he has arrived at lesults of the highest prac- 

 tical importance, and is enabled to render more 

 certain and efToctive the more tardy operations of 

 nature. In no department of agricultural industry, 

 it is believed, have the labors of science been 

 more beneficial or more apparent than in that of 

 the preparation and use of ^manures ; certain it is, 

 there is no department more deserving attention, or 

 where an elucidation of the principles and laws 

 that govern the growth of plants, acts with a more 

 direct and energetic influence. 



Classification. 

 Manures, by some, are classed as earthy, organic 

 and saline; others divide them into animal and 

 vegetable, mineral and mixed manures, and some 

 speak of them as composed only of geine or humus 

 and salts. Others class them as organic and inor- 

 ganic ; but these divisions are of little consequence : 

 every farmer understands that manure is the result 

 of decomposition or change; and that, whether or- 

 ganic, that is, derived from animal or vegetable 

 matter ; or inorganic, such as the earths, clay, 

 lime, the alkalies, &c., it is only efficient when 

 presented to plants in certain forms, such as decom- 

 position, division or solution. In France, they 

 have terms to distinguish those substances which 

 act mechanically in improving the te.\lure of the 

 soil, from those which act directly in the nourish- 

 ment of the plant. The former class of substan- 

 ces they call ame)i^/cmen<s, and the latter ones en- 

 grais. It is probable, however, that the system 

 which considers all manures as consisting of hu- 

 mus or geine, and salts, comprehending, in the 

 latter term, all the mineral substances that enter 

 into the growth or nourishment of vegetables, will 

 eventually be found the most simple, and at the 

 same time the most accurate of all the proposed 

 divisions of manures. Thus humus constitutes 

 the source of the carbon, forming the principal part 

 of the structure of plants, and the salts, where 

 they do not enter into the structure of plants, are 

 active in preparing the other inorganic elements, 

 anil exciting the vegetable organs in their recep- 

 tion and appropriation of nutriment. 



Humus or Geine. 



Humua or geine is simply decomposed animal 



and vegetable matter; and as from it, by the ac- hydrogen, and nitrogen; the first derived from 



lion of oxygen, carbonic gas is derived, to be ab- carbonic acid, the second from the atmosphere the 



sorbed by water and taken up by the roots, or mix- third from the decomposition of water, and 'the 



ed with the atmosphere and taken up by the lea\e3 fourth from ammonia absorbed by waler,'and taken 



' ' " '■ ' ' '■ ' ip by the mots of the vegetables. Some of the 



of plants; or, as some agricultural chemists with 

 good reason suppose, is under certain circumstan- 

 ces dissolved, or is soluble, and thus rendered fit 

 for immediate nourishment to plants, it must be 

 considered the most important item in the produc- 

 tion of manures. The salts which are the most 

 efficient in aiding vegetation, or the most active 

 manures, arc those formed from the alkalies and 

 their various combinations. Thus, frotn pure lime, 

 or calcium, is formed, by the union with carbonic 

 acid, carbonate of lime ; with phosphoric Vic'td, phos- 

 phate of lime, the base of bones, one of the most 

 efficient of fertilizers ; with sulphuric acid, sul- 

 phate of lime, or gypsum, the value of which is 

 well understood ; and so with the other alkalies, 

 which, in their combinations, form substances of 

 the utmost consequence to plants. It is well 

 known that the outer covering of some kinds of 

 cane, contains so much flint or silex, as to strike 

 fire with steel ; and some of the grasses contain 

 this substance in such quantity that their ashes 

 will melt into glass with potash. Now, this hard- 

 ness, so necessary to their perfection, could not be 

 attained unless this flint had been rendered soluble 

 by union with an alkali, forming a silicate of pot- 

 ash, and by this solubility been rendered fit for the 

 action and appropriation of the plant. 



jPood of Plants. 

 If we would know what kind of food is required 

 by plants, one ot tho first steps necessary is to as- 

 certain of what the plants themselves are compos- 

 ed. The combinations of matter may be said to 

 bo absolutely endless ; but the original elements 

 of this multitude of combinations, are few in num- 

 ber. Chemistry has detected only some fiftyfive 

 substances incapable of further reduction, or what 

 ore called simple substances ; and of these, strange 

 as it may appear, only four, except in proportions 

 merely accidental, go to the formation of plants. 

 Of these the first is Carbon. This forms from 40 

 to .50 per cent, by weight, of the plants cultivated 

 for food ; and is therefore most important to ani- 

 mals and to man. The second of these simple 

 substances is Oxygen. The quantities of this sub- 

 stance are immense ; and though we are acquaint- 

 ed with it only in the form in which it exists in 

 the air, nearly one-half of the solid crust of the 

 globe, 21 per cent, of the atmosphere, eight pounds 

 in every nine of water, and more than one-half of 

 the living bodies of all plants and animals, are ox- 

 ygen. Hyihos;en \s ihe third substance peculiar 

 to plants. This is the lightest of known substan- 

 ces, and forms a small part of the weight of all 

 animal and vegetable bodies; constitutes one-ninth 

 part of the weight of water, but enters into the 

 composition of none of the masses that go to 

 form the crust of the globe, coal excepted. The 

 fourth simple substance entering into the forma- 

 tion of plants, is Mlrogen. This forms 79 per 

 cent, of the bulk of the atmosphere, constitues 

 part of most animal and some vegetable substan- 

 ces ; is found in coal to the amount of one or two 

 per cent., but does not exist in any other of the 

 mineral masses constituting the crust of the globe. 

 Although not an abundant substance, the impor- 

 tance of it is not the less decided, and some of its 

 functions are of the most indispensable kind. 

 Plant?, then, arc composed of carbon, oxygen. 



earths are occasionally detected in plants, and salts 

 of some kind are always present. In the prepara- 

 tion of manures, the principal object to be aimed 

 at, it is evident, must be to supply the materials 

 needed to furnish the carbon and the ammonia ; 

 and these are found in the greatest abundance in 

 dead or decomposed animal and vegetable matter. 

 Lata of J^ulrition. 

 It seems to be a law of nature, that the higher 

 the grade of the animal, or the more complicated 

 its organization, the greater the necessity of a cor- 

 responding degree of organization in the substan- 

 ces used as food : indeed the manner in which the 

 crude materials found in the earth and atmosphere, 

 are worked up by plants into a state suitable for 

 conversion into the flesh of animals or food for 

 man, exhibits the strongest proofs of benevolent 

 design in the formation of such grades of organized 

 matter. Man can, indeed, live on plants,"'but his 

 teeth demonstrate that flesh was to constitute no 

 inconsiderable portion of his food. As all animala 

 receive their food either directly or indirectly, from 

 the vegetable kingdom, it is evident their excre- 

 ments, or their decomposed bodies, must form ma- 

 nures of the most valuable kind ; and it is to thia 

 source, the excrements of animals, that the fanner 

 must look for his supply of manures to restore the 

 fertility of the soil. In treating further of ma- 

 nures, it will be best to begin with this, as the 

 most important class. 



(To be continued.] 



Labor. — Whence originated the idea that it was 

 derogatory to a lady's dignity to labor .= Surely, 

 such an idea ought not to be the growth of a re- 

 publican soil. The time has been, when ladies of 

 the first rank were accustomed to busy themselves 

 in domestic employment. Homer tells us of prin- 

 cesses who used to draw water from the springs, 

 and wash with their own hands the finest of linen,' 

 which their own hands had made. The famous 

 Lucretia used to spin in the midst of her atten- 

 dants ; and ihe wife of Ulysses, after the seige of 

 Troy, employed herself in weaving, until her hus. 

 band returned to Ithaca. And in latter times, the 

 wife of George III., of England, has been repre- 

 sented as spending an evening in hemming pocket 

 handkerchiefs, while her daughter Mary sat in a 

 corner darning stockings. Few American fortunes 

 will support a woman who is above the calls of 

 her family ; and a man of sense, in choosing a 

 companion to jog with him throtigh all the up-hills 

 of life, would sooner choose one who had to work 

 for a living, than one who thought it beneath her 

 to soil her pretty hands with manual labor, although 

 the latter possessed her thousands. To be able to 

 earn one's living by laboring with her own hands, 

 should be reckoned among female accomplishments, 

 and I hope the time is not far distant when none 

 of my countrywomen will be ashamed to have it 

 known that they are better versed in usefulness 

 than they are in attainments which have no other 

 worth than as mere amusements Mrs. Child. 



The pleasures of youth re-produced by memory 

 are ruins viewed by torch-light. 



