1867. 



NEW ENGLAND FAR]\IER. 



461 



SPECIAL MANURES. 



OMJiON acceptance seems to 

 ^v, have attached lo the term 

 y special manure, the idea or 



\' meaning of something used as a 

 fertilizer, or as a stimulant, that is 

 not accumulated through the ordi- 

 nary resources of the farm, — that 

 is from the fodder and the stock. 

 It is a common practice to use considerable 

 manure in the months of August and Septem- 

 ber, in stocking down lands to grass, and in 

 various other ways, — and in speaking of special 

 manures now, and as we purpose occasionally 

 to do, it will be with the intention of stating 

 what they are and hoiv they are generally used, 

 rather than to recommend them, preferring to 

 leave that matter to the cultivator himself. It 

 ought to be stated, however, that we firmly be- 

 lieve two things, — 



1. That every farmer ought to exhaust all 

 his resources for making manure at home, with 

 his own means, and, 



2. When this has been done he can profita- 

 bly use genuine special manures under very 

 many circumstances. 



It is only within a comparatively short period 

 that any considerable use has been made of the 

 special articles that are now quite commonly 

 employed as manures. Some of the old Ro- 

 man writers frequently spoke of the value of 

 ashes and lime, but seem not to have had the 

 remotest idea of many of the substances 

 whii-h have been broui^ht to act an important 

 part in husbandry, and which do actually in- 

 crease the value of many of our crops to a 

 con-iilerable extent. 



One after another, these special agents have 

 been discovered and introduced, and by some 

 are ihouiiht iiidi.^pensable agents in high farm- 

 ing. That some of them are of great value, 

 giving not only a pre.-ent but a permanent 

 power of increase to the soil, there can be no 

 dniihr. Such, among others, is the use of bones. 

 Tliis fact was long ago learned by the farmers 

 of Eiigland, who increased their wheat crop, 

 by the agency of bones and thorough drain- 

 age. fio;n the low standard of fifteen bushels 

 per acre up to forty, with an average of about 

 thirty. So great was the demand for them, 

 that they s^oon became an important article of 

 commerce, and British ships navigated every 

 sea, and visited the remotest lands, to secure 



cargoes of bones. Our own shores were 

 stripped of thousands of tons that went to fer- 

 tilize the British Isles, while they impoverished 

 as many of our own acres that were starving 

 for them. They not only visited the hunting 

 grounds of Africa, but gathered up the bones 

 of countless herds of cattle on the Pampas of 

 South America, that had been killed for their 

 tallow, hides and horns alone ! Even battle- 

 fields, where men and brutes found a common 

 grave, were carefully gleaned, and the de- 

 caying relics of unnumbered soldiers, or of 

 horse and rider, found a too early resurrection 

 and were exchanged for British gold ! All 

 these were transferred to the soil, and, with an 

 improved husbandry in other respects, gave it 

 a productive power which it had never had be- 

 fore. And it was not a spasmodic power, but 

 a permanent and reliable one, that has brought 

 the most luxuriant crops for more than half a 

 century. The example of our trans-Atlantic 

 friends at length awakened our own people to 

 a sense of the importance of bones as food for 

 plants, and some of them have been gathered 

 and converted into superphosphate, bone meal 

 and bone-flour, to be used both as a fertilizer 

 and to be mingled with the food of our do- 

 mestic animals. 



The testimony of chemists is well expressed 

 by ]\Ir. Hocher, in his work entitled "Science 

 for the School and Family,'''' that "the powder 

 of bones is an exceedingly valuable manure, 

 as one can readily see it would be from ob- 

 serving the composition of bone. A bone is 

 composed of an animal part, gelatine ; and a 

 mineral part, nine-tenths of which is phosphate 

 of lime, and one-tenth the carbonate. The gel- 

 atine is of great value as a fertilizer for any 

 crop, because of the nitrogen which it contains ; 

 and the phosphate of lime is especially favor- 

 able to the development of seeds ; and there- 

 fore bone-dust is particularly appropriate as a 

 manure for grain-fields. It is on account of 

 this phosphate of lime that bone-dust is so 

 beneficial to dairy land. Milk and cheese b- th 

 contain this substance. There is about half a 

 pound of it in ten gallons of milk. Bone-dust 

 is also an excellent manure for wheat, for 

 though this be a silica plant, that is, a plant in 

 who.-e ashes sand, or silicate of lime, abounds, 

 the presence of phosphate in the soil is essen- 

 tial to the formation of the seeds. If the soil 

 be rich in silicates but deficient in phosphates, 



