930 



XoTEs ON Manures for January. 



[Jan., 



with whicji it can be spread. If it were dry and in fine powder 

 it would be worth about three-quarters the price of good ground 

 limestone : it is not, however, in so good a condition. It has to 

 be spaded out, but as the frost will cause it to disintegrate this 

 is no drawback : at about one-quarter the price of ground lime- 

 stone the material would be worth having. 



A Northern Town Refuse. — The Superintendent of the 

 Cleansing Department, Gateshead, sends the following 

 particulars of the fertiliser made by the town authorities from 

 the refuse. The tins, ]x)ttles, glass, and similar materials are 

 removed : stable manure, slaughterhouse refuse and earth- 

 closet material are added, and the whole passed through a 

 preliminary machine and broken up to pass through a 5/8 grate. 

 As 90 per cent, of the houses in Gateshead are of the old earth- 

 closet type the house refuse contains a considerable proportion 

 of human excrements : it is not surprising therefore that the 

 manure finds a ready sale. 



The material is delivered in 5 -ton lots, and on a farm 5 miles 

 away the price works out to 5s. 6d. per ton, the steam wagons 

 taking the material where possible into the actual field which 

 is to be treated. It has given good results on roots, and it 

 improves the physical texture of the soil, though it still remains 

 to be seen whether the material lasts as well as farmyard 

 manure. On the farm in question farmyard manure is estimated 

 to cost 14s. 2d. per ton. 



It cannot be assumed, however, that all town refuse is as 

 good as this. Towns on the water system have less valuable 

 material to dispose of, and farmers should not buy until they 

 know just what it is likely to be w^orth to them. 



Green Manure. — In view of the necessity for increasing the 

 supplies of organic matter in the soil, a correspondent in East 

 Kent sends the following account of a method he has tried with 

 advantage. He sowed red clover in a crop of wheat, but instead 

 of letting it stand for hay he ploughed it in after harvest. On 

 another part of the same field trefoil was similarly sown in the 

 wheat and afterwards ploughed in. A third portion was seeded 

 with rye giass, and the rest of the field was left in wheat only. 

 After ploughing in the green crops oats were sown. Bed clover 

 and trefoil both produced a marked improvement in growth, as 

 one would expect. It might be urged that this use of red clover 

 would be prejudicial to the sowing intended for seeds hay as 

 increasing the risk of clover sickness. This objection probably 

 would not apply to trefoil, and as the seed is cheap the gain to 

 the oat crop was a profitable one. 



