828 
IRotes, Communications, anb 
■(Reviews. 
THE CONSERVATION OF FARM-YARD 
MANURE. 
In the sixth volume of his Agricultural Studies (Etudes Agro- 
nomiques ) Monsieur L. Grandeau, the distinguished Inspector- 
General of French Agricultural Stations, has included an inter- 
esting dissertation on “ French Agriculture and Farm-yard Manure ” 
— if fumier de ferme may be thus translated. Literally, f under de 
■ferme, or “ farm manure,” is wider in its meaning than “farm-yard 
manure,” inasmuch as it includes the excreta of grazing animals. 
But the real subject of M. Grandeau ’s paper is the “ muck-heap” — 
its importance, its value, its weight, and its waste — especially its 
waste. Since Agricultural Chemistry began to be preached to 
farmers, one of the most prolific themes of its ministers has been 
the preservation of farm-yard manure. As soon as chemistry re- 
cognised that the most valuable properties of dung resided in its 
more soluble and more volatile constituents, it became obvious that 
a vast annual national loss occurred through the free exposure of 
dung-heaps and the running to waste of their rich brown juices. 
Some of the earliest papers of the late Dr. Voelcker record careful 
and minute investigations into the nature, causes, and extent of the 
losses to which farm-yard manure is subject during the period 
between its production and its burial in the soil ; and nearly every 
agricultural teacher in this country has made use of his facts and 
figures to illustrate the indisputable assertion that much of our 
national wealth is yearly annihilated by the running into drains and 
ditches (and hence away into underground waters, streams, and 
rivers) of concentrated ammoniacal drainage from our ill-managed 
farm-yards — to say nothing of the evaporation into the air of am- 
monia, much of which might be conserved. 
The fact of the vast economic loss borne by the nation in the 
waste of the sew r age of large cities is, for the present, regarded with 
some approach to equanimity by the more thoughtful, in the light of 
the circumstance that, so far, we have no means of avoiding it ; that 
is to say, that the cost of recovering the fertilising matter in the 
sewage of large cities, by any process consistent with the maintenance 
