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which they had entirely overlooked. This condition I had 

 observed twenty years before Professor Voelcker and Mr. Johnston 

 announced the principle with which it is connected. During the 

 winter tlie frosts and winds have disintegrated and dried these 

 masses, until they admit by their pulverulent condition of being 

 more thoroughly distributed over the soil. We then approach the 

 annunciation of this maxim. 



Manures, to produce their best effect, must be thoroughly dis- 

 tributed over and through the soil. Reduced to its finest and 

 most pulverulent condition, each small particle of manure should 

 be divided from its fellows by many particles of soil. How to do 

 this without waste, is the great secret; and the methods are 

 various. 1st. By frequent turning. 2. By composting with swamp 

 muck, peat, straw, soil, and other crude materials. 3d. By 

 returning the water that flows from a heap to its surface, by 

 pumping and otherwise. 4th. By combining the dung of diiferent 

 animals, as the easily heating dung of the horse, with the cold 

 and unfermenting dung of cows and swine. 5th. And worst and 

 most common of all, by allowing the dung and litter of the stable 

 to decay undisturbed in heaps, heating and fire-fanging to ashes 

 in the centre, and wasting many times tlie value of that which 

 remains. I do not propose here to analyze and compare these 

 various methods, but simply to endeavor to clear away the mist 

 which surrounds some simple principles. 



Amid all the discussion of the value of manures and their 

 treatment, their creative power of inducing the sustaining principle 

 of other substances, has never been treated of. No wonder is 

 excited by the fact, that a small piece of fermented bread placed 

 in the centre of a batch of dough, will excite the vinous fermen- 

 tation, and entirely change the chemical condition of the whole 

 mass. In the same manner may a comparatively small portion 

 of actively decomposing matter reduce a large bulk of inert and 

 even poisonous substances to an active and valuable agency in 

 fertilizing the soil. Many a man has laboriously hauled the muck 

 off his swamp upon his field, and with disgust and chagrin beheld 

 the death of every vegetable in its vicinity. The heat and active 

 fermentation of dung mixed with muck, would have excited a 



