250 On Vegetable Matter as Manure. 



tops of his early Potatoes, and other green vegetables sub- 

 stances, in this way, with much advantage. 



In these experiments, the Plum-stone was placed to ve- 

 getate in the turf of the alluvial soil of a meadow, and the 

 Potatoes grew in ground which, though not rich, was not 

 poor ; and, therefore, some objections may be made to the 

 conclusions I am disposed to draw in favour of recent vege- 

 table substances, as manures. The following experiment is, 

 however, I think, decisive. 



I received, from a neighbouring farmer, a field naturally 

 barren, and so much exhausted by ill management, that the 

 two preceding crops had not returned a quantity of corn 

 equal to that which had been sowed upon it. An adjoining 

 plantation afforded me a large quantity of Fern, which I 

 proposed to employ as manure for a crop of Turnips. This 

 was cut between the 10th and 20th of June; but as the small 

 cotyledons of the Turnip-seed afford little to feed the young 

 plant ; and as the soil, owing to its extreme poverty, could 

 not yield much nutriment, I thought it necessary to place 

 the Fern a few days in a heap, to ferment sufficiently to de- 

 stroy life in it, and to produce an exudation of its juices ; and 

 it was then committed, in rows, to the soil, and the Turnip- 

 seed deposited, with a drilling machine, over it. 



Some adjoining rows were manured with the black vege- 

 table mould obtained from the site of an old wood pile, 

 mixed with the slender branches of trees in every stage of 

 decomposition, the quantity placed in each row appearing to 

 me to exceed, more than four times, the amount of the vege- 

 table mould, which the green Fern, if equally decomposed, 



