830 
The Conservation of Farm-yard Manure. 
practical farmer who is uninstructed in chemistry is quite sufficiently 
instructed in arithmetic to see that a proposition involving such 
costly plant works out to an absurdity, and, for a time at least, he 
wants no more “agricultural science.” Even to-day, when remark- 
ably little encouragement exists for increasing the capital invested 
in the land, teachers alienate from them the sympathies of earnest, 
sensible, practical men, by telling tenant-farmers who can scarcely 
exist, and whose landlords think themselves lucky to get even a 
largely reduced rent, that the means of removing agricultural de- 
pression consists in the erection of model buildings, and covered 
yards to economise the manurial resources of the farm. Covered 
farm-yards are desirable, no doubt ; but the small farmer, who has 
them not, should be taught how he can best take care of his 
manure in their absence. 
Without doubt, however, we have, of late years, whether the 
suggested causes be right or wrong, grown somewhat apathetic on 
the subject of the waste of farm yard manure ; while on the Continent 
a good deal of attention has continued to be directed to the syste- 
matic study of this product. 
Some of the results of this study, and their expansion into a form 
indicative of their economical and national importance, constitute the 
backbone of M. Grandeau’s essay ; and, although it is an essay ad- 
dressed primarily to French agriculturists, there is plenty of matter in 
it that appeals to the attention of all stock-keeping farmers, of what- 
ever nationality, and therefore some account of it may find a fitting 
place in our own Journal. 
M. Grandeau makes vigorous war on the school of agricultural 
advisers who minimise the importance of dung, and look for its 
efficacious replacement by chemical fertilisers. The production and 
utilisation of dung are an essential part of the process of meat-pro- 
duction, and if we are to replace dung by chemical equivalents, then, 
says M. Grandeau, we should, to be logical, learn how to replace the 
beef-steak and the leg of mutton by some equivalent chemical con- 
coctions. Not that he underrates the immense importance of chemical 
fertilisers as an adjunct to the more natural manuring. He merely 
maintains that their functions are to complete the work and supple- 
ment the deficiencies of dung, and not to take its place. He looks, 
in fact, to an increased head of stock, and consequently a greater 
production than ever of dung, as the goal for which farmers should 
make. As part and parcel of the attempt to bring this about, M. 
Grandeau says, with emphasis, that every effort to popularise the use 
of artificial phosphates, potash salts, and nitrates, must be made and 
encouraged. “But to proscribe, on that account, farm -yard manure, 
or to tolerate it as an evil that cannot very well be done away with, 
is quite different. It is, on the contrary, towards showing the value 
of this precious product of the land, towai'ds teaching the most 
efficacious means of preserving its properties by good methods of 
preparation, and by treatment still insufficiently employed on most 
farms, that the efforts of sound and sensible persons should tend, 
without regard to such spurious popularity as may be left to the 
