472 Food of Plants, 



houses from which to draw manure. No more of the lazy trick of setting it 

 on fire, as is done too often ; and a more diabolical act is scarcely to be con- 

 ceived, than consuming by fire the valuable produce of the earth. Let any 

 one take a waggon-load of heath in bloom, and chop it short, that is to say, 

 to lengths of nine inches, and then put it into the mash-pool till it is tho- 

 roughly soaked with water, in which its own softer parts have been dissolved 

 by maceration, and without any further preparation let this be drilled into the 

 earth in the manner that Scotch and other farmers drill in their dung for 

 turnips and potatoes ; and if other ordinary culture and management are pro- 

 perly attended to, thel'e will be good reason to hope for a remunerating crop 

 of potatoes. 



1 am well aware of the tanning matter contained in the bark, &c., of wood, 

 of which so much has been said and written; and I know that fresh tanner's 

 bark is no manure ; and, lest this idea should deter any from trying other mace- 

 rated vegetable matter, I must be allowed to hint that, though fresh tanner's bark 

 is no manure, yet rotten tan is proved to be a very valuable ingredient in the soil 

 where young vines are planted, and when it is reduced sufficiently to pass 

 through a riddle of a quarter-inch mesh. Let its merits be tried as vegetable 

 mould in the culture of pot plants, as calceolarias, &c., and experience of its 

 beneficial influence will, I have no doubt, soon mend its character. But it is 

 not the macerated remains of any particular plant or tribe of plants that is to 

 be taken as a sample of the sort of manure I am speaking of ; it is the mass of 

 mixed manure formed of the waste of vegetables, and preserved from evapo- 

 ration and heating by being kept under water, instead of being thrown in a 

 heap, dry or half-dry, as is usually done : and it is from distinct observation, for 

 a series of years, of the store heaps that some Scotch farmers and others 

 make who are anxious to grow turnips, that I have come to the following 

 fixed points upon the subject, from which the foregoing and following con- 

 clusions were drawn. 



The manure secured by these persons in the summer and autumn, when cast 

 into a proper pit, and trodden down by pigs and other stock till it was quite 

 firm and free from heating, came out the following June as green as if it had 

 been in one of the well known preserve jars of Cox and Co, of Reading ; 

 whilst some other wiseacres had carted similar manure into a square heap on 

 the headland of their turnip field in the frosty weather in winter, and by June 

 the store heap (thus made in January) had lost certain!}' one third of its bulk, 

 and more of its value. Therefore, manure should be made when we can, and 

 preserved under water free from heat, for certainly it is one of those things 

 that will take to itself wings and fly away; and I think, in many cases, the crop 

 of leaves from such as an oak or the like may, if properly husbanded, be more 

 valuable than the crop of fruit on an apple tree. When we consider that 

 ever to be regretted waste of the finest manure, I mean night soil, it is no 

 wonder that human beings want the fruits of the earth, when they stain the 

 air with filth that might fatten acres for many a fertile year to come. Let 

 any one try dry earth from his garden, dry fern from the woods, turves from 

 the lanes, or any such absorbing stock, and when a cubic yard of this has 

 lain in the mash-pool for one month, and has, by the agency of the water, 

 become incorporated with one cubic foot of night soil, which is only one part 

 to twenty-seven, he will find this a very strong manure ; and it is therefore 

 no wonder that it was a little too strong both for the nostril and the garden, 

 when it was twenty-seven times more concentrated. The waste then in that 

 alone is ruinous to cottage gardening ; for, if a person has a cubic yard of 

 this, a little management will make, without expense, twenty-seven cart-loads 

 of manure out of it, and this twenty-seven yards would go far to give him an 

 acre of turnips, &c. We have lately seen published the marvellous account 

 of wheat having been grown upon a bare rock, the seed covered with straw 

 only. Now it would certainly have been a very great wonder if it had not 

 grown so ; for rotten straw is no stranger for the roots of wheat to meet with 

 and live by : and as the straw on the rock got wet and heat, it soon was much 



