PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CLUB. 137 



may be mentioned greaves, or the residuum wliich is left after making 

 candles, and the scrm which forma on the top of boiling sugar. Though 

 these substances are dear, still they will go a great ways and produce 

 lasting eflects. In the compost heap you may blend both these matters 

 in the proportion of four of mould to each of them. And when used as top 

 dressing, it will never fail to produce a full crop of grain, or hay, and a 

 rich sweet aftermath. If salted fish, that have been spoiled on shipboard, 

 are added to the compost heap, grass will be rendered so rank that depas- 

 turing cattle will not eat it till mellowed by tlie following winter's frost. 

 If not placed in the compost heap, it will be found that the combination of 

 lime with greaves, mixed with the mould from headland, will make a 

 highly active manure. Lime combined with woolen rags, or with night 

 Boil. and then mixed in the compost heap with charcoal dust, will produce 

 a favorable effect in the support of vegetable crops. And they will be 

 lasting, because some of their properties will be absorbed by the charcoal, 

 during the time of their decomposition, and afterwards parted with slowly 

 in the soil. 



The Arabians, who are noted for taking great pains to improve their 

 lands, are accustomed to make large pits, in which they place animal sub- 

 Stances, and cover them wnth calcareous earth of the most sterile kind, 

 which soon acquires the properties of the richest manure. 



I once formed a compost heap consisting of pigeon's dung, refuse from 

 a glue factory, the cuttings of felt manufacturers, the clippings of fur- 

 riers, feathers, greaves, piths from bullocks' horns, blood, scrapings of 

 oiled leather, and waste of shoemakers. I found these materials, when 

 decomposed, were capable of being mixed with six times their weight of 

 muck, or mould, and as thej abounded in oil, mucilage, and other matters 

 soluble in water, they contributed in the must wonderful degree to the sup- 

 port of vegetation. Another compost heap was formed of small fish, 

 offals from hogs, refuse from a slaughter house, charcoal dust, bone earth, 

 hair, fresh water niuscles, and barn-yard manure. These were capable of 

 affording much elastic volatile matter to the earth mixed with them, mak- 

 ing the whole mass inoffensive and highly advantageous to the grov/th of 

 vegetation, so much so that a poor soil without it yielded 40 bushels of 

 oats to the acre, when a portion of the same with it produced 75, and be- 

 sides being so superior, the crop was ten days earlier. I discovered fur- 

 ther that the crop 'was finer where 26 bushels were used, than that top 

 dressed with 56. The reason was that the proportion of earthy matter in 

 the field was just sufficient to reduce the ammonia, and other matters con- 

 tained in the compost added by the 26 bushels, and adapt it to the support 

 of vegetation, but not the 56 bushels. 



ANIMAL DUNGS. 



The animalized substances are most generally made use of as manures, 

 which on all farms are found in very different conditions, proceeding from 

 the kind of food on which the animal has been fed, the matters with which 

 they are incorporated, and the texture of the substances themselves. The 

 excrement of fat animals possesses much greater powers of fertilization 

 than the excrement of lean ones. When an animal is fed on oily seed, it 



