AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 511 



roots of grain. A few years since I manured an acre of ground 

 with a mixture of dung and straw, thoroughly rotted, and a con- 

 tiguous acre with fresh dung and new straw. The first year the 

 first acre produced by far the best crop, but the second and third 

 year the second acre produced the best crop ; the fourth year the 

 two acres yiekled alike inferior crops, the manure being exhausted. 

 It is an erroneous idea to suppose that animal or vegetable ma- 

 nures add any warmth to the land when spread thinly over it; 

 but they do attract the gases floating in the atmosphere, which 

 have a tendency to influence the duration of the manure in the 

 soil, and no loss accrues to the farmer ; there being but little 

 heat, there is no fermentation. 



But recent manure piled up in the open farm-yard generates 

 heat, and loses weight rapidly; the volatile gases escape the 

 moment fermentation commences, and by the time the mass is 

 half decomposed, the farmer has lost one-half of his manure, in 

 bulk. If you would add organic matter to your land, it would 

 be far better to put on the recent manure, and plow it in, that 

 the products of decay may be absorbed by the soil, rather than 

 waste its valuable properties in the barn-yard. In a single day, 

 horse manure exposed in an open yard to atmospheric influences, 

 will ferment and lose much in weight; therefore the value we 

 assign to it one hour will not apply the next, and if left one week, 

 scarcely one-half of its original weight will remain. Its valuable 

 properties may be retained by an immediate application of char- 

 coal dust, saw-dust, muck, or dilute sulphuric acid. The remedy 

 is cheap and always at hand, but rarely used. Let me, in this 

 connection, inform the stock farmers that the loss they meet with 

 annually in liquid manure, amounts to millions of dollars, and 

 urge them, as I have often done before, to build tanks for its pre- 

 servation. In Flanders, the liquid derivable from a single cow is 

 valued at ten dollai-s per annum, but it is in reality worth twenty; 

 containing as it does nine hundred pounds of solid matter, 

 valued at the price of guano, would net that amount. Suppose, 

 then, that there are eight millions of cattle in the United States, 

 and value their liquid at ten dollars each, the price paid in Flan- 

 ders, it would amount to |80,000,000. The saving of this en- 



