306 A WOED ABOUT MANURES. 



pocket. Many kinds, under our system of farming, are 

 unavailable to the farmer. I mean the liquids. Without 

 floors to the stables and pig-pens, the urine, which is the 

 richest of manures, so far as salts are concerned, is wasted. 

 But he can save his own, and the excrements of one man, 

 properly saved for one year, will well manure one acre of 

 land. Why let these rivers of wealth flow away from the 

 farm ? He prefers going to the shops and buying worse 

 than he can prepare on his farm. 



There are many artificial manures for sale. Plasters 

 from Kentucky and Virginia; phosphate of lime from 

 South Carolina ; bone dust from the large cities, and many 

 other mixtures and compounds. But scarcely a farmer but 

 what has at his command a manure, rich in every respect 

 and with the addition of a cheap alkali, equal in chemical 

 properties to cow dung: I mean the scrapings of ponds, and 

 the mud of rivers and creeks. West Tennessee has an area 

 containing pure muck, the balance of the State has no such 

 advantage; but next to muck, and nearly as valuable, is 

 pond and river mud. By the addition of two pounds of 

 sal soda or potash, such as is used for washing purposes, to 

 100 lbs of muck, the mass becomes, as near as possible, cow 

 dung. So here we have an almost inexhaustible supply of 

 cow dung, without its smell or offensiveness. The green 

 sand beds in West Tennessee also will supply fertilizers in 

 unlimited quantities. 



Here then, the provident farmer has all that is requisite 

 to enrich his grounds before seeding to grass. It is need- 

 less to say that clover, as a preceding crop to land that is 

 about to enter the long and tedious travail of meadow, is 

 absolutely requisite. But after it is started, the farmer need 

 not think, for one moment, that grass adds to its fertility. 

 It does not, but on the other hand, detracts ju3t what the 

 farmer cuts off; and if he is a wise farmer, he will put 

 it back in a shape to increase his drafts on it. 



When a meadow or pasture becomes packed, from too 



