244 Transactions of the Amebic an Institute. 



inattei*s from tlie air and from rain Avater, and has developed salts and 

 the mineral elements of plants by the oxidation and decomposition of 

 its constituent particles, hastened by disturbance of the plow and 

 haiTOw, so that the succeeding crop should much exceed the last,, 

 and so on till the point of highest production is reached. On the 

 score of economy, as ■svell as health and decency, no farmer should 

 allow any appreciable amount of stench or noxious effluvia about his 

 premises, from whatever source, as such perfumery costs more than 

 Phalon's or Lubin's. And so simple and handy a deodorizer as loam,, 

 liberally and often applied, ^vill render cess-pools, hog-styes, privies, 

 &c., nearly inodorous, and their contents inoftensive to compost and 

 cart, while the amount of fertilizing matter thus saved, would sur- 

 prise any one who had neither tried it or thought about it, as is the 

 case with most farmers. A great error is very prevalent with most 

 farmers, in supposing that of a crop the straw is of more consequence 

 to return to the soil than the grain, which imdoubtedly arises from 

 their losing most of the grain from not using absorbents, and perhaps 

 applying what they do save, in a way to injure other than benefit 

 crops, as I once knew a saphead to spoil a part of his yield of corn 

 with hog manure that should have made a great crop of the whole, 

 while other parts of the same field suifered from poverty of soil. 



A Factory Operative in Ka:nsas. 



Mr. L. L. S. Ruggles, Salina, Kansas. — A correspondent of the 

 Springfield Bepiiblican, writing from this State, says : " To live in a 

 shanty and eat pork and corn bread, does very well for a change, and 

 for a short time ; as a regular thing, from which there is no escape, 

 it soon becomes tedious to those who have been accustomed to some- 

 thing better. Tlie Springfield mechanic, who will live as roughly 

 and cheaply there, as he must if he becomes a pioneer farmer, will 

 be richer there at the end of five or ten years, than if a M'estern 

 homestead had been given him." Every phase of life hath its shady 

 as well as sunny side, and the Springfield mechanic must know he 

 cannot wholly escape the necessary inconveniences of such a life. 

 We cannot all expect to keep sugar plums in our mouths through 

 life, neither can we aflford to leave the west to the government of the 

 hardy foreigner. Being all my early life a Massachusetts mechanic, 

 and my wife being brought up, as it were, in a cotton factory, we 

 not only individually, but collectively, " speak right out in meeting," 

 and take oath, after a pretty thorough trial of some dozen years, in 



