1870. 



XEW EXGLA2JD FAEMER. 



377 



exposed to sun, wind, and rain, until the 

 boards are rotted away, le'^ving large holes in 

 to their cattle stalls, admitting cold and storm ; 

 then the boards are turned bottom end up, 

 leaving the same holes against the hay mow 

 above. I have seen others plough and not 

 plant; plant and not hoe. Others make no 

 effort to furnish absorbents to hog yard or sta- 

 ble ; they never lay up the stones that fell 

 from the walls in the days of their fathers, 

 forty years ago. I heard such an one testify 

 upon the witness stand that '"he was a farmer," 

 a fact that I should have hardly credited, did he 

 not positively swear to it. Others taking up 

 the patriarchal cry, "go down into Egypt and 

 buy corn," depend on the West for their 

 bread. Others feed thsir crops on commer- 

 cial fertilizers, and send their farms into Bos- 

 ton market in the potato sack and the hay bale. 

 If any money can be made by farming in 

 these ways, it is evident that we have not yet 

 answered the question, "how to make the 

 most money from our farms." Such prac- 

 tices were tested three thousand years ago. 

 The ruins of twenty-seven cities on the banks 

 of the Nile, partly covered by drifting sands, 

 attest to the former prosperity of the agricul- 

 ture of old classic Egypt, first in the science 

 of astronomy and architecture, as well as ag- 

 riculture. Country produce was transported 

 to those cities to be consumed, but nothing 

 returned to the soil. All this manurial matter 

 was suifered for ages to pass with the waters 

 of the Nile into the Mediterranean, thence 

 perhaps into the Atlantic, possibly to be de- 

 posited on the Chincha islands — thus, perhaps, 

 answering the disputed question of our last 

 evening — where it was stored for the use of a 

 people living in a then undiscovered world. 



Save the If anuve. 



This is the first thing for us to do who wish 

 to make the moft money from the farm. This 

 is the great Archimedean lever in agriculture. 

 It is the corner-stone of the foundation of all 

 successful f.irming. By increasing the ma- 

 nure heaps you take the first steps towards 

 "making the most money from the farm." 



Give me plenty of manure and I can spread 

 a corn field in every valley ; cover every hill 

 side with waving grain; "make the desert 

 blossom as the rose ;" load a vessel with pro- 

 vision for every hamlet of half starved and 

 down-trodden Ireland ; and hasten on the Mil- 

 lennial days spoken of by Isaiah, so far as the 

 landscape is concerned. 



The manure heap can be increased by fur- 

 nishing hog yards, cattle and horse stalls with 

 turf, as an absorbent, from the road side, 

 from under the stone walls in the fields, and 

 such corners as no plough can reach. A thou- 

 sand loads can be taken from every small farm, 

 from places where grass has rotted and leaves 

 collected, and only bring the banks down as 

 low as they were fifty years ago. Saw dust 

 and swamp mud answer the same purpose. 



Cittle and horses should be housed in sum- 

 mer as well as winter, and absorbents be 

 spread under them to save the liquid part of 

 the manure, which, according to Dana, is fully 

 equal to the solid. ISIy own experience proves 

 it to be better. In 1857 I spread loam soaked 

 with cattle urine on one end of a piece of 

 oats, and on the other end sojid manure. 

 Where the urine was spread the crop was far 

 the heaviest and darkest colored. 



Swamp mud, a thousand loads of which may 

 be found on almost every farm, when rightly 

 prepared, by being drawn out before hand 

 and exposed to sun and frost to remove its 

 acidity, and then mixed with ashes or lime, is 

 another great manurial element to help yoa 

 "make the most money from the farm." 



In confirmation of these views, I quote from 

 Dr. Andrew Nichols in the Agricultural Trans- 

 actions of Essex County, Mass. He sajs: 

 "If from six to eight bushels of lime are 

 thoroughly mixed with 100 bushels of muck, 

 and that amount applied for two or three years 

 in succession, it will not only bring good crops 

 during the years of its application, but in 

 connection with other manures usually em- 

 ployed, will give a permanent fertility to the 

 land." 



Oa this subject, Mr. Holbrock says: "I 

 have frequently applied a compost of muck 

 with dry slacked lime, though, when I can buy 

 asihes readily at not too high a price, I prefer 

 a given outlay in ashes, rather than lime. The 

 best fresh unslacked lime is the cheapest, be- 

 cause it is more effective in compost, and 

 swells very much in bulk, when dry slacked 

 for use. Six years ago I had a heap of seven- 

 ty-five half cords of muck, mixed with lime, in 

 the proportion of half a cord of muck to a 

 bushel of lime. The muck was drawn to the 

 field when wanted in August. A bushel of 

 salt to a tierce of lime (6 bushels) was dis- 

 solved in water enough to slake the lime down 

 to a dry fine powder, the lime being slacked 

 no faster than wanted, and spread immedi- 

 ately while warm over the layers of muck, 

 which were about six inches thick ; then a 

 coating of lime, and so on until the heap 

 reached a height of five feet, and of a conven- 

 ient width and length to embrace the whole 

 quantity of mn^k. In about three weeks a 

 powerful decomposition was apparent and the 

 heap was nicely overhauled. Nothing more 

 was done do it till it was loaded the next spring 

 for spreading. The compost was spread on 

 the ploughed surface of a dry sandy loam, and 

 harrowed in at the rate of fifteen cords to the 

 acre. The land was planted with corn, and 

 the crop was more than sixty bushels to the 

 acre..'''' 



You can see that this is fully equal to barn 

 yard manure, as fifty bushels to the acre of 

 corn is more than an average crop with us, 

 where ten cords of the best barn yard manure 

 is used to the acre. Larger reports are made 

 of late, but I can say that the framers of theso 



