Proceedings of the "Farmers' Club. 439 



I have had the roads raked, and used the dirt thus collected with good 

 success. 



Mr. IT. Stewart — The manure referred to in this letter is in as 

 good condition as it can be. "When manure is allowed to be trodden 

 down and kept nmist it does not ferment injuriously, and in the 

 spring is in excellent order to be drawn out and spread on the fields. 

 The labor and expense involved in composting this manure with 

 muck or earth would be very great, even if this man has a supply of 

 those materials ready "at hand. But there is a mistake about the heat 

 of fermenting manure being sufficient to cook an egg. • No heat so 

 great as the boiling point of water is ever produced by manure. 

 Generally the temperature of a manure heap when it is in active fer- 

 mentation is not over sixty degrees, and a hot-bed, which is built up 

 for the express purpose of giving heat, will very rarely attain a tem- 

 perature of 100 degrees when the sashes are closed. Fire-fanging is 

 dry rot, and if manure is kept moist it will not become fire -fanged. 



Cape May Soils and Ceops. 



Dr. Isaac P. Trimble, from the committee appointed last summer 

 to visit the county of Cape May, N. J., submitted the following 

 report : 



In company with David Petit, that well-known practical farmer of 

 Salem county, they spent the sixth, seventh and eighth days of July 

 most pleasantly in that county. They were met everywhere by kind 

 and hospitable friends, w T ho seemed to have arranged beforehand 

 their plans so judiciously that we were able to see everything of inte- 

 rest in agriculture that the entire county afforded. It would give us 

 pleasure here to return our thanks individually to all those who 

 showed us such marked attention, but the list would be so long as to 

 take too much of the space allotted for our report. By a reference 

 to the map before you, it will be seen that while New Jersey is one 

 of the smaller States of the Union, it stretches from north to south 

 through more than two degrees of latitude, the county of Cape May 

 being the extreme southern limit, running south of the thirty-ninth 

 parallel, and comparing with the other counties of New Jersey as 

 Florida does to the other States of the Union. "While we expected 

 to see vegetation much in advance of our own, we were greatly sur- 

 prised at so great a difference. We were shown a field of tomatoes, 

 where a large portion of the crop (July 7) was fully ripe. Another 

 ■field was pointed out to us, then planted with potatoes, where a crop 

 had already been taken off and sold for nine dollars per barrel. "We 



