292 On the Maintenance of Fertility in ncio Arable Land. 
of the farmer's business, and one to which a great deal of attention 
has of late years been directed. 
Nevertheless, on a farm of any extent, my experience, so far 
as it goes, is entirely opposed to the alleged economy attending 
the use of the liquid-manure cart, which has been so extensively 
advocated. It is no doubt of the greatest importance that the 
urine of the animals fed on the farm be all saved ; but this ad- 
vantage is dearly bought by the labour which attends its direct 
application on distant fields. I believe that the cheapest and best 
method of consuming cattle-food, both as regards the manufac- 
ture of butchers' meat and the manufacture of manure, is Mr. 
Warnes' system of box-feeding. In it the straw used as litter 
accumulates under the cattle for many weeks together, the urine 
is entirely absorbed, and no water falls on the mass to wash out 
any of its soluble parts. This is the plan adopted here. The 
boxes are cleaned out when they become inconveniently full, 
which may be at intervals of twelve to fourteen weeks, and the 
manure, which is of the richest quality, is then at once taken to 
the field where it is to be used, laid upon a bed of earth, and 
thickly covered with the same. The manure from the sheep is 
prepared in the same way : it is removed, perhaps twice in the 
winter, from the sheds under which it accumulates. That, how- 
ever, which is made in the stable is of course daily carried out to 
a heap hard by, and the urine of the horses is collected in a 
tank near the place, and from this it is pumped, to soak the half- 
wetted straw. 
It must be acknowledged, that here, as on every other farm 
that I have seen, there are many causes of waste in operation. 
The rain, as well as the liquid manure, falls upon the dung-heaps, 
and if the latter enriches, the former impoverishes the mass, 
which is alternately saturated by them. Large open yards, too, 
necessarily receive an immense quantity of rain-water in the 
course of the winter. Upwards of 27,000 cubic feet annually 
fall during that season on ours; a quantity and weight which it 
is impossible, with profit, either to collect in tanks or to carry to 
the fields. A large portion of this water must therefore run lo 
waste, and it carries with it the soluble part of whatever manure 
it washes. We endeavour to prevent this as much as possible ; 
and in consequence of our system of box and shed-feeding, we 
doubtless sustain less loss in this way than many other farmers; 
but a certain injury is no doubt sufi(M ed — one, however, which we 
think cannot be remedied by any application of the cumbrous 
machinery of water-carts and tanks. 
It is to these three departments of farm-management, then, 
that we must look to keep up the fertility of land under aral)le 
culture: the aUernate system of husbandry, by which the land 
