r40 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



is thoroughly undordrained and top dressed with solid compost, and the 

 other from the same species of soil irrigated with the strongest liquid 

 manure, the contrast will be apparent to all. The former will present the 

 appearance of mud, the latter of pellucid oil. 



Simple and decisive proofs of the power of soils fur chemical combination 

 were given experimentally by Professor Way, before the Royal Agricultu- 

 ral Society of England, by passing large doses of urine and sewer water 

 in a turbid and offensive condition through clay soils, and producing a 

 liquid free from smell and clear as spring water. Where more manure is 

 applied at any one time than the earth can absorb, the excess is, as might 

 be expected, discharged through the drains. But if there be waste, the 

 remedy is, not returning to the use of solid manure, with which there must 

 be still greater waste, but in extending the application of the liquid, so that 

 there may be land enough to employ it all. 



It is now well understood that land manured by liquid, or liquefied manure, 

 retains its fertility in a most remarkable and astonishing manner, and that 

 the effects so far from being transient, have a very great permanency. It 

 is a subject of common observation, that where there has been transuda- 

 tion through the pipe leading to the field, the mark of the line traversed is 

 visible in the higher color and better growth of the grass in the second 

 year. Land dressed with one dressing only of liquid manure during the 

 season, but no dressing during the second season, will bear superior crops 

 the second, as well as the first season. 



It will be found that ten hogsheads of cow urine placed on an acre of 

 wheat at the time of sowing, will produce a better crop than that manured 

 with two cwt. of Peruvian guano, put on at the same period. Showing 

 plainly that liquid manure lasts not only during the winter, but even until 

 the harvest time of wheat, the latest cereal we grow, proving conclusively 

 that the soil possesses the power of absorbing and retaining for the suste- 

 nance of vegetation, manure contained in any liquid which filters through 

 it ; for it is evident that the liquid could not possibly be retained for so 

 many months in the soil. These results show that there is no doubt but 

 that liquid manure may be applied to the land when it is fallow with the 

 certainty of the best incorporation, and that the deposit there will be safe 

 and available for the subsequent crop. Applications during the growth of 

 vegetation, prove that the application of liquid manure to land, may, under 

 proper management, with the interruption of hard frosts only, be as con- 

 tinuous as its production, and dissipate the exaggerated estimates as to 

 the extent of storage, and the great expense and inconvenience of the tanks 

 required for such manure. The fertility to soil producible by liquid manure 

 irrigation is a cumulative and continually increasing fertility, the limit of 

 which has not yet been ascertained. We know that the average yield at 

 Edinburgh has been four thick crops a year of grass eighteen inches high, 

 and the collective weight cut is at the rate of eighty-one tons per acre, 

 and that in some instances the weight of the ear in wheat was increased 

 beyond the strength of the straw, and the crops were lodged; this might 

 have been prevented by using miscellaneous manure containing the food of 

 all parts of the plant, siliceous matter for the stalk, phosphates for the seed 

 and nitrogenous matter for the herbage. By the addition of silica and 



