50 



On the Agriculture of the Netherlands. 



or when cabbages are planted; and composts prepared with 

 straw, earth, and dung, with the liquid portions occasionally 

 poured over them, are found to be a more effectual and lasting 

 manure. The Swiss, whose principal object is to have a supply 

 of food for their cattle in winter, when the mountain pastures are 

 covered with snow, and who devote much of their attention to 

 the cultivation of roots and artificial grasses, use the liquid ma- 

 nure in a very condensed state, collecting the water which has 

 been poured over their heaps of dung, after it has filtered through 

 them and been saturated with all the soluble portions of the 

 dung. This, which they call lizier, in French, and mist-wasser, 

 or giille, in German, is carried on the land immediately after the 

 grass, sainfoin, or lucern has been mown, and produces a second 

 and third crop in a very short time. Cabbages, potatoes, and 

 the varieties of the beet are invigorated in the same manner ; 

 and thus, in the short summers of the high mountain valleys, 

 crops are brought to maturity, which, without the use of liquid 

 manure, would never have had time to ripen. But let it not be 

 imagined that either the Flemings or the Swiss undervalue the 

 solid manure which is produced by the mixture of litter with the 

 dung of animals, collected in heaps, where it heats and decom- 

 poses. They are as careful of this, and as anxious to increase it, 

 by every means in their power, as the best English farmer can 

 be:— ' 



" In order to increase as much as possible the quantity of solid ma- 

 nure, there is in most farms a place for the general reception of every 

 kind of vegetable matter which can be collected ; this is a shallow ex- 

 cavation, of a square or oblong form, of which the bottom has a gentle 

 slope towards one end. It is generally lined on three sides with a wall 

 of brick, to keep the earth from falling in ; and this wall sometimes 

 rises a foot or more above the level of the ground. In this pit are col- 

 lecte<J parings of grass sods from the sides of roads and ditches, weeds 

 taken out of the fields or canals, and every kind of refuse from the gar- 

 dens : all this is occasionally moistened with the washings of the stables, 

 or any other rich liquid ; a small portion of dung and urine is added, 

 if necessary, and when it has been accumulating for some time it is 

 taken out, a portion of lime is added, and the whole is well mixed toge- 

 ther; thus it forms the beginning of a heap, which rises gradually, 

 and in due time gives a very good supply of rich vegetable mould or 

 compost, well adapted to every purpose to which manure is applied." — 

 p. 22. 



It will be seen hereafter that, in the preparation of the land for 

 the different crops, the Flemings and Dutch do not use less solid 

 manure than we do, and that the liquid is an additional means of 

 producing a certain and abundant crop, and not merely a sub- 

 stitute for the dung-heap. 



• The great secret in the improvement of poor land is to increase 



