414 
Management  of  Manure. 
the  additional  merit,  which  I know  by  experience  to  be  great,  that 
while  they  improve  the  land,  they  relieve  the  tenant  from  the 
necessity  of  finding  employment  for  labourers  in  the  winter — a 
time  when  farmers  can  often  hardly  find  work  to  give. 
Management  of  Manure. 
The  construction  of  fann-buildings,  as  I have  already  said, 
must  depend  on  the  proposed  management  of  the  manure.  But 
this  is  a doubtful  question,  even  in  practical  farming ; and 
chemistry  can  as  yet  say  little  about  it,  because  we  have  few 
analyses  of  the  droppings  or  urine  as  they  proceed  from  the 
animal,  and  if  we  seek  to  trace  the  changes  which  these  after- 
wards undergo,  we  find,  unfortunately,  that  Boussingault’s  analyses 
of  prepared  dung,  on  which  we  might  have  hoped  to  reason,  are 
pronounced  by  Liebig*  to  be  chemically  incorrect.  Walking 
then  thus  in  the  dark,  it  behoves  us  to  be  wary  in  following 
lights  that  would  divert  us  from  the  beaten  track.  Our  practice 
hitherto  has  been  to  make  the  dung  in  open  farmyards,  but  to  this 
practice  two  objections  are  raised,  the  escape  of  ammonia  into  the 
air,  and  of  liquor  into  the  neighbouring  ditch.  For  these  two 
defects  then  various  remedies  have  been  proposed,  one  of  them  the 
use  of  liquid  manure.  Sometimes  a drain  is  made  from  the  cow- 
house, conveying  the  urine  into  a tank  from  which  it  is  carted, 
and  so  distributed  over  the  land.  One  farmer  I see  thus  distri- 
buted the  urine  of  thirty  beasts  unmixed  in  the  last  spring,  hav- 
ing kept  it  throughout  the  winter.  I feel  bound  to  point  out  the 
heavy  loss  he  has  thus  incurred.  According  to  Sprengel  the 
contents  of  a cow’s  urine  stand  as  follows  : — 
Water 
, , 
. 92,624^ 
Urea 
. 4,000 
Free  ammonia 
205 
Other  matters  . 
• 
3,171 
100,000 
The  urea  is  the  matter  from  which  is  formed  by  fermenta- 
tion the  ammonia  which  we  seek  to  detain,  and  Sprengel  desiring 
to  ascertain  how  far  water  would  serve  the  purpose,  left  one 
portion  of  the  same  urine  pure  and  another  portion  mixed  with 
an  equal  quantity  of  water  ; both  to  stand  for  a month.  The 
result  was  as  follows  : — 
Pure  Urine. 
Mixed  Urine,  omitting  the  water  added. 
Water 
95,442 
Water  .... 
. 93,481 
Urea 
1,000 
Urea  .... 
600 
Ammonia,  partly  uncombined 
487 
Ammonia  . . 
1,622 
Other  matters  .... 
3,071 
Other  matters  . 
4,297 
100,000 
100,000 
* Liebig’s  Agricult.  Chemistry,  3rd  Edit.  p.  209. 
