MANUKES AND THEIR APPLICATION. 225 



should be well decomposed. In tlie former case, the soil is 

 rendered more open to the access of air, with a free passage 

 for any surplus of water. In the latter case, the decomposed 

 manure has just an opposite tendency, and it also keeps the 

 roots cool and moist in warm dry weather, while its fertilising 

 elements are ready for immediate absorption. Manure should 

 not be deeply buried, except for such plants as carrot and par- 

 snip, but should be kept near the surface, in the hope that 

 where the elements of nutrition are, there the roots will 

 be also ; and there is little doubt that if all the materials 

 required by the plants were placed within convenient reach, 

 less root-pruning would be required amongst bushes and fruit- 

 trees. Besides the solid manure, the liquid drainage from 

 the farmyard is of great value. When it is collected in 

 a tank and allowed to ferment and putrefy, its fertilising 

 properties have an immediate effect on vegetation. It should, 

 however, be well diluted before being applied to growing crops. 

 It may be easily spread over unoccupied ground when in a 

 fresh state, and thus prevent the unavoidable loss of volatile 

 gases in the process of fermentation. Decomposed urine from 

 the byre and stable is an excellent manure, owing to the number 

 of fertilising salts it holds in solution. It should be applied 

 to vegetables and all growing plants with care, and when used 

 in fruit-growing, it should be used only in a weak state when 

 the fruit is swelling and the soil exhausted, because of the 

 tendency which an excess of ammonia and nitrogenous sub- 

 stances have to produce gross spongy growth. The error of 

 using stimulating manures without regard to a proper combi- 

 nation of elements may be illustrated by a common practice 

 in agriculture. The farmer may be observed sowing so many 

 hundredweights of nitrate of soda on an acre of his grass fields, 

 and if the weather is moist, the effect, to all appearance, is 

 wonderful ; but if a comparison he made between the stock 

 fed on that part of the field dressed with nitre, and another 

 part which had not received any, the difference will be out of 

 all proportion to that expected, showing clearly that certain 

 manurial substances have the power of increasing the growth 

 of the plant, but cannot impart to it the nutritive elements 



