[APRIL, 



permeated with the mycelium. The masses of manure begin 

 to look white and dusty, a condition which the practical man 

 describes as " fire fanged." It is generally agreed that such 

 manure is seriously deteriorated, but no analyses are available. 



With these general facts in mind it will be possible to interpret 

 the experiments which have been made on this subject. In the 

 first place it can be shown that there is no loss of nitrogen in 

 the gaseous form due to the animal, the nitrogen contained 

 in the urine and faeces is equal to the nitrogen in the food, 

 less whatever may have been retained by the animal in its 

 bodily increase. Numerous feeding experiments have demon- 

 strated this point. 



Assuming the animal itself to cause no loss of nitrogen other 

 than that retained in the increased live weight, a number of 

 experiments have been made to ascertain the losses under 

 ordinary working conditions of making farmyard manure. 



For example, Maercker and Schneidewind at Leuchstadt, 

 Saxony, in 1896-97 tied up twenty-four three-year-old steers 

 from 16th June to 29th October, 1896, 136 days, during which 

 their average increase of live weight was 306 lb. The food 

 consisted of lucerne hay, chaff, barley straw, dried sugar beet 

 pulp, decorticated cotton-cake, and bran, and they were littered 

 with wheat straw. 



Twelve of the beasts were tied up in a deep, carefully cemented 

 box or pit, from which no losses by drainage could take place, 

 and the dung was not disturbed but kept trampled down 

 until the end of the trial. The second twelve were fed in an 

 ordinary stall, and the dung and litter were removed every 

 other day to one or other of two heaps in the yard alternately, 

 one of these being covered by a roof and the other open to the 

 weather. At the end of the feeding experiment the three lots 

 of dung were carefully sampled and analysed, with the results 

 set out in Table II below. 



In a second experiment fourteen steers were fed in the deep 

 pit from 6th November, 1896, to 21st February, 1897, when 

 the dung made was cleared out, sampled and analysed. The 

 experiment was then resumed until 21st May, after which the 

 dung was left in the box for another month until 17th to 18th 

 June, without any beasts to keep it trodden down, the weather 

 being meantime very hot. The results appear under 4 and 5 



