THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



279 



FERMENTED AND UNFERMENTED 

 MANURES. 



Mr. F. Mortimer Butler, an ingenious cor- 

 respondent of the New York Farmer, contends, 

 that animal and vegetable matter should never 

 be permitted to undergo fermentation, but that 

 it should be reduced to the state of insoluble 

 mould by use of an alkali, before it is applied to 

 plants. It is true, he says that their food will 

 not, under such circumstances, be brought to 

 the rootlets or mouths of plants in a soluble 

 form, but that this mould, by the slow decay 

 which a proper tillage induces, will evolve gases 

 that will furnish a much greater and more eco- 

 nomical supply. Hence he concludes, that ma- 

 nures fermented and unfermented. long and short, 

 are equally to be avoided, and that all ought to 

 be united with an alkali to bring them to a state 

 of mould or dry rot ; when they will neither be 

 washed away by rain nor quickly evaporated 

 by the atmosphere. He, therefore, recommends 

 the use of lime and compost beds. We copy 

 the following : 



From the Farmer and Mechanic. 



LIME AND BARN YARD MANURE IN 

 RAISING WHEAT. 



"We. saw recently a parcel of very superior 

 red wheat, weighing 64 lbs. per bushel. The 

 wheat in question was the product of a field 

 which a short time since was part of a waste 

 common that had been uncultivated for many 

 years, and was deemed to be too poor and worn 

 out to yield any thing. After enclosing it, the 

 present owner put lime upon it in the proportion 

 of one hundred bushels to the acre, and subse- 

 quently followed the lime with a liberal applica- 

 tion of stable manure. Last fall the field thus 

 prepared was sowed in wheat, and has just re- 

 turned a crop of the very best quality, averaging 

 thirty bushels to the acre." 



Mr. Fleet, — Permit me to direct your atten- 

 tion to the above paragraph, taken from the Bal- 

 timore American. It shows the benefit to be 

 derived from lime and barn yard manure when 

 the two are used together. The fact is the more 

 valuable since the crop is wheat. Since insolu- 

 ble matters cannot be taken up by the roots of 

 plants, our farmers have been led to argue, that 

 any substance tending to render manures inso- 

 luble must be injurious to them. And since 

 lime renders the soluble portions of stable ma- 

 nures insoluble, they have condemned its use in 

 conjunction with such manure. This decision, 

 however, does not rest on practice, but upon 

 hypothesis, and consequently is liable to be re- 

 versed. 



Permit me to suggest the necessity of draw- 



ing a distinction between the state in which 

 manures exist in the earth, and the state in 

 which thev are taken up by plants, especially if 

 we wish to arrive at just conclusions respecting 

 their action. 



" It is known that the earth is the common 

 stomach of plants, and as such, receives their 

 crude food ; which crude food we term manure. 

 For plants there is also a common power of di- 

 gestion, the decomposing influence of the atmos- 

 phere. Under this influence manures assume a 

 fluid or gaseous form, and become the digested 

 food of plants. We might then, with propriety, 

 make this distinction. The crude material to 

 be recognized as manure, which when digested 

 by the atmosphere should be considered as hav- 

 ing become the food of plants. And thus we 

 would be led to say that manures may be either 

 of a soluble or insoluble nature, but the food of 

 plants becomes either a fluid or gaseous body. 



By such distinction we can read the nature of 

 the fact which I have called your attention to 

 that lime had rendered the soluble portions of 

 the stable manure insoluble. In such a state 

 they could not have been taken up by the wheat 

 plants. But lime induces in this manure the 

 action of skrw combustion, through which it is 

 converted into gaseous and fluid bodies, and thus 

 becomes the food of the plants. 



The points to be derived from this experiment 

 are, that the plants were mostly fed upon gases 

 and water, and produced much grain. Had 

 stable manure been used alone, the crop would 

 have yielded much straw and but little grain. — 

 Some three summers back I was engaged in 

 Ulster county, dry rotting barn yard manure by 

 composting it with lime and earth. My neigh- 

 bors objected to the course, stating that the ma- 

 nure would be rendered insoluble. Upon being 

 informed that that was one end that I wished to 

 produce, they raised another objection, that the 

 manure would be " fire-fanged." 



Upon being assured that such action was im- 

 possible, since the earth, being intimately blended 

 with the manure, would prevent it, they then 

 resolved to leave me as one bent upon the pur- 

 suit of his own folly. After the dry rot of the 

 manure had been effected they were surprised 

 on beholding a fine yellowish brown friable mass, 

 possessing the mechanical properties of mould, 

 in place of the products of fire-fanging. 



The good effects of this manure upon crops 

 gave equal surprise. One of my neighbors 

 took the matter into consideration, and afterward 

 stated to me the following fact : He had some 

 years previous bought a tract of worn out land, 

 for nine dollars the acre, and put upon it all the 

 barn yard manure that he had to spare. But 

 as that quantity was less than his judgment dic- 

 tated as being required by the land, and since 

 lime was then considered as a manure, he made 

 up the deficiency in lime. The manure was 



