AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 411 



Here good garden land near New- York is worth $300 or $400 an 

 acre, and yet the swamps are everywhere lying idle. 



There are millions of loads of muscles within a mile of Brooklyn, 

 not one pound of which is ever used, while all around men are 

 complaining of the failure of crops on light sandy land. 



Mr. Field gave the following formula for forming a compost- 

 heap with substitutes for swamp-muck : 



COMPOST. 



There is nothing within the whole range of his labors that gives 

 the genuine lover of fruit and vegetable growth such complete 

 satisfaction as the increase in size and excellence of his compost- 

 heap. In it the imagination has hidden the subtle essences which 

 will ripen into the golden pear, color the blushing cheek of the 

 melting peach, give lustre to the green foliage and beautiful 

 growth of the trees on which his care is bestowed. 



For it the cultivator is storing up the chemicals for natm*e's 

 laboratory, and is thus prepared to restore to her the elements 

 which shall reappear in the purest gold. Untold wealth lies 

 hiding in its dark and unseemly mass; and at the magic touch of 

 the wand of the great enchantress, shall burst forth in a blaze of 

 glorious beauty. 



No single substance or kind of manure contains all the virtues 

 or manurial requisite for tree or fruit growth ; and a compost 

 which should contain all or most of the fertilizing agents I have 

 found in practice to produce the finest growth of fruit. My own 

 grounds do not afford good evidence of the comparative results of 

 particular manures, as all parts of them have been highly 

 fertilized to the depth of three, and even four feet, but the best 

 results have been obtained from a compost of swamp or peat muck. 



At one time, as this was difficult to obtain at that season of the 

 year, a heap was made in the following manner : An old post 

 and rail fence was removed, and a layer 25 feet square of the 

 tough, spongy sods of the headland laid down, about six or eight 

 inches thick, and on this a layer of leather-shavings, three or 

 four inches; above this an inch of refuse brine (a portion of this 

 was brine from hide vats, where it had been used to deprive skins 

 of hair, which last formed, perhaps, one-sixth of its bulk). To 

 every second layer of sods, one inch of bone-meal was used instead 

 of the mild brine, and twice a layer of eight or ten inches of fresh 

 horse-manure, to aid in starting the fermentating heat. The whole 

 was encased and covered with sods, with a narrow rim, turned 



