VoL. I. 
AUGUSTA, Ga., SEPTEMBER 13, 1843. 
No. 19. 
PRIZE ESSAY. 
THE PREPARA.TION AND USE OF MANURES. 
BY Willis gaylord. 
Introdoction. — Of all the pursuits to which 
mankini, from necessity or inclination, have de- 
voted themselves, there is none more honorable, 
certainly none more u.seful, than that of agricul- 
ture< i'o pursue this business succes.sfully, 
knowledge, extensive and varied, is required ; 
for although a man may succeed by tollowing 
the beaten paths ol his predecessors, occasion 
will frequently arise, when the end desired may 
be attained by methods much shorter than those 
usually adopted, if the farmer is able to form 
and apply them. It is here that science has, 
w'ithin a few years, rendered the most essential 
aid to agriculture. Sometime.s, reasoning from 
well known effects to their causes, the agricul- 
tural chemist has placed in the hands of the 
farmer the means of producing results, always 
desirable, but which, under the older systems 
of farming, with its utmost care, he frequently 
failed of obtaining. Again, taking well estab- 
lished facts in animal or vegetable phisiology as 
his starting point, he has arrived at results of 
the highest practical importance, and is enabled 
to render more certain and eliective the more 
tardy operations of nature. In no department 
of agricultural industry, it is believed, have the 
labors of science been more beneficial or more 
apparent than in that of the preparation and 
use of manures ; certain it is, there is no de- 
partment more deserving attention, or where an 
elucidation of the principles and laws that gov- 
ern the growth of plants, acts with a more di- 
rect and energetic influence. 
DEFINITIONS. 
A definition of the term manure, may be ne- 
cessary, in order to treat the subject understand- 
ingly, as different individuals use the word in 
widely different senses, some in a wide, and 
some in a limited one. A few instances of the 
meaning put upon the term will be given from 
a few of the modern writers who have adverted 
to this topic. Thus Dr. Leiber, in his German 
Conversationes Lexicon, defines manure to be 
“vegetable, animal and mineral matters, intro- 
duced into the soil to accelerate vegetation, and 
increase the production of crops.” The Ency- 
clopedia, published by the London Society for 
the Promotion of Useful Knowlehge, thus de- 
fines it : — “Every substance which has been used 
to improve the natural soil, or to restore to it 
the fertility which is di minished by the crops 
annually carried away, has been included in the 
name of manure.” Loudon, in his great work 
on agriculture, says — “Every species of matter 
capable of promoting the growth of vegetables, 
may be considered as manure.” Professor Low, 
in his Elements of Agriculture, says — “All 
substances, which when mixed with the matter 
of the soil, tend to fertilize it, are in common 
language termed manures.” Mr. Johnson, in 
his “Farmer’s Encyclopedia,” lately published, 
says — “A manure may be defined to be any fer- 
tilizing compound or simple ingredient added 
to a soil, of which it is naturally deficient.” — 
The definitions of Prof. Liebig and Dr. Dana, 
two of the latest writers on the subject, do not 
differ essentially from those already given. Ot 
these definitions, I prefer the most simple and 
comprehensive, that of Loudon, and in this pa- 
per shall consider the term manure, as embrac- 
ing every substance capable of promoting the 
growth of plants. 
CLASSIFICATION. 
Manures, by some, are classed as earthy, or- 
ganic and saline ; others divide them into ani- 
mal and vegetable, mineral and mixed manures, 
and some speak of them as composed only ot 
geine or humus and .salts. Others class them 
as organic anc. inoriranic; but these divisions 
are of little consequence, as every farmer un- 
derstands that manure is the result of decompo- 
sition or change; and that, whether organic, 
that is, derived from animal or vegetable matter; 
or inorganic, such as the earths, clay, lime, the 
alkalies, &.c.; it is only efficient when presented 
to plants in certain forms, such as decomposi- 
tion, division or solution. In France, they have 
terms to distinguish those substances which act 
mechanically in improving the texture of the 
soil, from those wffiich act directly in the nour- 
ishment ol the plant. The former class of sub- 
stances they call amendments, and the latter 
class engrais. It is probable, how'ever, that the 
sy.stem which considers all manures as consist- 
ing of humus or geine, and salts, comprehend- 
ing, in the latter term, all the mineral substan- 
ces that enter into the growth or nouri.shment of 
vegetables, will effectually be found the most 
simple, and at the same time the most accurate 
of all the proposed divisions of manures. Thus 
humus constitutes the source of the carbon, 
forming the principal part of the structure of 
plants, and the salts, where they do not enter in- 
to the structure of plants, are active in prepar- 
ing the other inorganic elements, and exciting 
the vegetable organs in their reception and ap- 
propi iation of nutriment. 
HUMUS OR GEINE. 
Humus or geine is simply decomposed ani- 
mal and vegetable matter; and as from it, by the 
action of oxygen, carbonic gas is derived, to be 
absorbed by water and taken up by the roots, or 
mixed with the atmosphere and taken up by the 
leaves of plants ; or, as some agricultural chem- 
ists with good reason suppose, is under certain 
circumstances dissolved, or is soluble, and thus 
rendered fit for immediate nourishment to plants, 
it must be considered the most important item 
in the production of manures. The salts, which 
are the most efficient in aiding vegetation, or 
the most active manures, are those formed from 
the alkalies and their various combinations. — 
Thins, from pure lime or calcium, is formed, by 
the union with carbonic acids, carbonate of lime, 
with phosphoric acid, phospha-te of lime, the base 
of bones, one of the most efficient of fertilizers; 
with sulphuric acid, sulphate of lime, or gypsum 
the value of which is well understood; and so 
with the other alkalies, which, in their combin- 
ations, form substances of the utmost conse- 
quence to plants. It is well known that the 
outer covering of some kinds of cane, contain 
so much flint or silex as to strike fire with steel; 
and some of the grasses contain this substance 
in such quality that their ashes will melt into 
glass with potash. Now, this hardness, so ne- 
cessary to their perfection, could not be attained 
unless this flint had been rendered soluble by 
union with an alkali, forming a silicate ofpot- 
dsh, and by this solubility been rendered fit for 
the action and appropriation of the plant. 
FOOD OF PLANTS. 
If we would know what kind of food is re- 
quired by plants, one of the first steps necessa- 
ry is to ascertain of what the plants themselves 
are composed. The combination of matter may 
be said to be absolutely endless; but the origin- 
al elements of this multitude of combinations, 
are few in number. Chemistry has detected on- 
ly some fifty-five substances incapable of further 
reduction, or w'hat are called simple substances; 
and of these, strange as it may appear, only four, 
except in proportions merely accidental, go to 
the formation of plants. Of these the first is 
Carbon. This forms from 40 to 50 per cent by 
weight, of the plants cultivated for food; and is 
therefore most important fo animals and to man. 
The second of these simple substances, is Oxy- 
gen. The quantities of this substance are im- 
mense; and though we are acquainted with it 
only in the form in which it exists in the air, near- 
ly one half of the solid crust of the globe, 21 
per cent of the atmosphere, eight pounds in 
every nine of water, and more than one-halt of 
the living bodies of all plants and animals, are 
oxygen. Hydrogen is the third substance pecu- 
liar to plants. This is the lightest of known 
substances, and forms a small part of the weight 
of all animal and vegetable bodies ; constitutes 
one-ninth part of the weight of water, but en- 
ters into the composition of none of the .nasses 
that go to form the crust of the globe, coal ex- 
cepted. The fourth simple substance, entering 
into the formation of plants, is Nitrogen. This 
forms 79 per cent of the bulk of the atmosphere, 
constitutes part of most animal and some vege- 
table substances; is found in coal to the amount 
of one or two per cent, but does not exist in any 
other of the mineral masses constituting the 
crust of the globe. Although not an abundant 
substance, the importance of it is not the less 
decided, and some of its functions are of the 
most indispensable kind. Plants then, are com- 
posed of carbon, oxygen hydrogen, and nitro- 
gen ; the first derived from carbonic acid, the 
second from the atmosphere, the third from the 
decomposition of wmter, and the fourth from 
ammonia absorbed by water, and taken up by- 
roots of the vegetables. Some of the earths 
are occasionally detected in plants, and salts of 
some kind are always present. In the prepara- 
tion of manures, the principal object to be aim- 
ed at, it is evident, must be to supply the ma- 
terials needed to furnish the carbon and the 
ammonia; and these are found in the greatest 
abundance in dead or decomposed animal and 
vegetable matter. 
LAW OF NUTRITION. 
It seems to be a law of nature, that the higher 
the grade of the animal, or the more complicat- 
ed its organization, the greater the necessity of 
a corresponding degree of organization in Ihe 
substances u-sed as food; indeed the matter in 
which the crude materials, found in the earth 
and almosphere, are worked up by plants into a 
state suitable lor conversion into the flesh of an- 
imals or food for man, exhibits the strongest 
proofs of benevolent design in the formation of 
such grade of organized matter. Man can, in- 
deed live, live on plants, but his teeth demon- 
strates that flesh was to constitute no inconsid- 
erable portion of his food. As all animals re- 
ceive their food, either directly or indirectly, 
from the vegetable kingdom, it is evident their 
excrements, or their decomposed bodies, must 
form manures of the most valuable kind; and 
and it is I o this source, the excrements of ani- 
mals, that the farmer must look for his supply 
