560 MANURES. 



Old Lime Plaster, from Walls of Buildings, etc. — For mead- 

 ows, and for most other crops, especially on clays and loams, this is 

 worth twice its weight in hay; as it will produce a large growth of 

 grass for years in succession, without other manure. But the farmer 

 cannot too carefully remember that with this, as with all other saline 

 manures, but a part of the ingredients only is thus supplied to vege- 

 tables; and, without the addition of the others, the soil will sooner or 

 later become exhausted. 



Saving Barn-yard Manure. — The bulk, solubility and peculiar 

 tendency to fermentation of barnyard manure, renders it a matter of 

 no little study so to arrange it as to preserve all its good qualities and 

 apply it undiminished to the soil. A part of the droppings of the cattle 

 are necessarily left in the pastures, or about the stacks where they are 

 fed; though it is better, for various reasons, that they should never 

 receive their food from the stack. The manure thus left in the fields 

 should be beaten up and scattered with light, long-handled mallets, 

 immediately after the grass starts in the spring, and again before the 

 rains in the autumn. With these exceptions, and the slight waste 

 which may occur in driving cattle to and from the pasture, all the 

 manure should be dropped either in the stables or in the yards. These 

 should be so arranged that cattle may pass from one directly into the 

 other; and the yard should, if possible, be furnished with wells, cis- 

 terns, or running water. There is twice the value of manure wasted 

 annually on some farms in sending the cattle abroad to water, that 

 would be required to provide it for them in the yard for fifty years. 



The premises where the manure is dropped should be kept as dry as 

 possible; and the eaves should project several feet beyond the side of 

 the building so as to protect the manure thrown out of the stables 

 from the wash of rains. The barns and all the sheds should have 

 eave-troughs to carry off the water, which, if saved in a sufficiently 

 capacious cistern, would furnish a supply for the cattle. The form of 

 the yard ought to be dishing toward the center, and, if on sandy or 

 gravelly soil, it should be puddled or covered with clay to prevent the 

 leaking and escape of the liquid manure. The floors of the stables 

 may be so made as to permit the urine to fall on a properly prepared 

 bed of turf under them, where it would be retained till removed; or it 

 should be led off by troughs into the yard or to a muck heap. 



Value of Liquid Manures. — The urine voided from a single cow 

 is considered in Flanders, where agricultural practice has reached a 



