348 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER 



MAT 1, 1«* 



DANA'S PRIZE ESSAY ON MANURES. 



(Concluded.) 

 Manures Composed chiefly of Mould. 

 And now, reader, having been broiislu by this 

 course of reasoning;, to what the mould wants, 

 [i. e. salts,] consider what tons and tons of useless 

 mould you have in your swamp muck and peat 

 bogs, your hassocks, and your turfy meadows. All 

 these, foot upon foot in depth as they lie, are truly 

 vegetable mould, in a greater or less degree of de- 

 cay. If you dig this up, and expose it to the air, 

 that itself sets it to work, decay is hastened, vola- 

 tile matters escape, yea, ammonia, the master-spirit 

 among manures, is secretly forming and at work", 

 warming and sweetening the cold and sour muck. 

 Without further preparation, practice confirms what 

 theory teaches, that this process alone furnishes 

 from these beds of vegetable mould, a very good 

 manure. It is already highly charged with all the 

 salts which a plant wants. But experience, doubt- 

 loss led by the light of the good results of mixing 

 mould with animal matter to preserve its strength, 

 has also reversed the practice, and taught the util- 

 ity of adding to vegetable mould quickening salts ; 

 that is, either the volatile alkali, by composting the 

 mould with stable manure, or alkali in the shape 

 of ashes, or potash, or soda-ash, or lime, or a mix- 

 ture of these. In fact, whatever substance can 

 by. putrefaction give off volatile alkali, will, and 

 must, and does, convert vegetable mould, of itself 

 dead and inactive, into a quick and fertilizing ma- 

 nure. 



If, then, reader, you pause here a moment upon 

 this fact, and then cast your eye backward over 

 the principles we have endeavored to impress on 

 your memory, you will perceive that there is not, 

 among all the classes and kinds of manure which 

 we have shown you, one which may not be added, 

 or as is the phrase, composted, with peat, meadow- 

 mud, swamp-muck, pond-mud, or by whatever other 

 name these groat storehouses of vegetable matter 

 are called. These are the true sources of abun- 

 dant manure, to all whose stock of cattle, &c. is 

 too small to give manure enough for the farmer's 

 use. 



It is the farmer's business to make a choice (if 

 he has any but Hobson's,) of what substance or 

 mixture of substances he will use. We have 

 shown him how small a portion of animal matter, 

 one to ten of pure mould, will impregnate that sub- 

 stance. Taking, then, a cord of this swamp muck, 

 we shall find it contains in round numbers, about 

 one thousand pounds of real dry vegetable mould. 

 So that the carcass of an animal weighing one hun- 

 dred pounds, evenly and well mixed up with a cord 

 of fresh dug muck, will make a cord of manure, 

 containing all the elements, and their amount too, 

 of a cord of dung. 



But it is not from the carcasses of animals that 

 the farmer expects to derive the quickening salts 

 for his muck. This can be the source of that pow- 

 er only to the butchers, (what fat lands they all 

 have!) or to the dwellers near the sea, where fish 

 is plenty. A barrel of alewives, it is said, fertili- 

 zes a wagon-load ol loam. The carcass of a horse 

 converts and fertilizes five or six cords of swamp 

 muck. A cord of clear stable dung changes two 

 cords of this same muck into a manure as rich and 

 durable as stable manure itself. These are all the 

 results, reader, of actual practice. The explana- 

 tion of the principle has only come in since the 



practice, and showed the how and the why of this 

 action. 



But the merit of explaining this action, would 

 be, is nothing, if it had not conducted one step 

 further. The explanation of the principle of the 

 action of animal matters, animal manures of all 

 kinds, whether solid or liquid, on muck or peat, 

 has led chemistry to propose, whore these cheap 

 and common forms of quickening power are not to 

 bo had, to mix ashes, or potash, or soda-ash with 

 swamp muck. Now, reader, this is not an idle, 

 visionary, book-farming scheme. It is perhaps one 

 of the few successful, direct applications of chem- 

 istry to fanning, which speaks out in defence of 

 such book-farming, in tones and terms which be- 

 speak your favorable consideration for the attempt 

 which science is making to lend you, reader, a 

 helping hand. This proposal, the offspring of sci- 

 ence, has been carried out successfully by practi- 

 cal men in our own country, and has made its way 

 abroad. Though this is not the place to give you 

 (he details of their results, you may rely upon the 

 fact, that alkali and swamp muck do form a ma- 

 !iure, cord for cord, in all soils, equal to stable 

 dung. 



Well now, after your patience in going over 

 these pages, I hope you will find your reward in 

 this statement. To be sure, it might have been 

 said at once, and so have done with it ; but I hoped, 

 reader, and I am sure I have not been disappointed, 

 that you liked to dive a little into the reason of 

 things, and felt that you had farmed too long by 

 the rule of thumb, to be satisfied that it was the 

 road either to improvement or profit. And so 

 among your first attempts at improving your worn- 

 out lands, always supposing you have not a barn- 

 cellar, hogs, and swnmp-muck, so aptly called by 

 one of your own self-made practical men, the " far- 

 mer's locomotive," I presume you may like to know 

 the proportions in which you may mix swamp-muck 

 and alkali. You can hardly go wrong he.o by 

 using too much ; the great danger is, you will use 

 too little alkali. But calculating on the proportion 

 of mould in fresh-dug swamp-muck, or peat, it may 

 be stated as a rule, grounded on the quantity of 

 quickening power in a cord of stable manure, that 

 every cord of swamp muck requires eight bushels 

 of common ashes, or thirty pounds of common pot- 

 ash, or twenty pounds of white or soda-ash, to 

 convert it into manure equal, cord for cord, to that 

 from your stable. Dig up your peat in the fall, 

 let it lay over winter to fall to powder, calculate 

 your quantity when fresh dug, and allow nothing 

 for shrinking in the spring ; when your alkali is to 

 be well mixed in with the mould, and, after shov- 

 eling over for a few weeks, use it as you would 

 stabl€ manure. 



These quantities of ashes and alkali are the 

 lowest which may be advised. Three or four 

 times this amount may bo used with advantage, 

 but both the quantity of alkali and the number of 

 loads per acre, must and will be determined by 

 each for himself. It is a question of ways and 

 moans, rather than of practice. But suppo.'iing 

 the smallest quantity of ashes or of alkali to bo 

 used which we have advised, then at least five 

 cords of the compost should be used per aero. 

 This iiin.y be applied to any soil, light or heavy. 

 Hut there is another form of this same swamp 

 muck and alkali, which should be used only on 

 light, loamy, sandy soils, to produce ' : greatest 

 benefit, thoug-h even on heavy soils not very 



wet, it may be used with great advantage, 'i 

 is a compost of one cord of spent ashes to t 

 cords of swamp muck. This is decidedly the 

 mixture which has yet been tried. We hav 

 this all that mixture of various salts and ni'l 

 which plants want, and both by the action of 

 mould and by that of the air, the alkali of 

 spent ashes, which no leaching would extrac 

 soon let loose, and produces all the elfects o 

 much clear potash or soda. 



I have thus, reader, given you a few of 

 ways by which you may convert your peat-1 

 and swamps into manure, when you have ngi 

 cattle nor hogs. I have not thought it w 

 while to go into this subject further, and give 

 directions for lime and salt, or other matters w 

 might be used. 1 have given you the most ( 

 mon, and those well known and at hand. All 

 want, then, to apply these principles of forr 

 composts, is to give them that little attention w 

 will enable you to understand them. And 

 rest must be left to your practical common st 

 without some share of which, farming, like ev 

 thing else, would be vanity end vexation of 8| 



I would here, reader, take my leave of you, 

 in the hope that we may again meet to have ar 

 er talk. There are a great many other point 

 lating to manure, which can be understood 

 after we have made ourselves somewhat acqu 

 od with the chemistry of soil. Then, having 

 plained that, before the full action of manure 

 be under.^lood, wo must proceed a step further 

 consider what changes take place in growing c 

 and the effects of these growing crops upon 

 and manure. The quantity and kind of salts 

 extract, and how soil is exhausted. This w 

 lead to the consideration of the quantity and 

 of manure to be applied to different soils, ant 

 value of different manures. But there is one 

 er very important thing belonging to our sub 

 Crops exhaust land, but fatten animals. Now 

 last properly belongs to that part of our subjec 

 lating to the changes occurring in vegetables, 

 their power ef exhausting the soil. It wil 

 seen, therefore, that the whole covers the gn 

 called Agricultural Chemistry. 



This Essny is only its first part. If it n 

 your acceptance, I trust it may encourage its 

 thor to draw up its second pari on soils, an 

 third part on the efl'ect of crops on soil, and l| 

 value as food for animals. 



THE CURCULIO. 

 Mr J. A. Kenrick, of Newton, in the Maga 

 of Horticulture, says : — " Having heard salt red 

 mended, [as a protection against the curculitj 

 concluded to make a trial of salt lye, havi' 

 quantity at command. The yard contains ai 

 one-eighth of an acre, in which I have abc 

 hundred trees. In the spring, I had about 

 cords of meadow nmd, well saturated withi 

 evenly spread and spaded in. (The year prev 

 about the snmc quantity of dock mud was ap| 

 in the same way.) About the first of June, I 

 on a load of about five hogsheads (salt lye) in o 

 tion, pouring it from a large watering pot, a 

 two common sized pailsfiill to each tree, satura 

 the whole ground in thi! y.ird ; and so powi 

 was the application that there was not a wee 

 be found the height of two inches during the 

 son : every tree bore well, and many of them i 

 so completely loaded with fruit, that I was obli 



