1877.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
11 
40° than at 50°. I have not his article before me, 
but this is the spirit of it,—only he makes it some 
definite quantity for some definite degrees. I 
should be sorry to use impolite language, but it 
may do to intimate that his enthusiasm has got the 
better of his judgment. All the cream that is in 
the milk will rise,—in good condition,—from milk 
set at 50°, and surely the lower thermometer will 
not put any more into it. Mr. Hardin has hit on 
an easy way by which those who cannot command 
the cold water for good deep setting, may avail 
themselves of the advantages of the deep system. 
If he will confine himself to this,—or to as much as 
he can prove,—he will build up a good business. 
Mr. Hardin complains that in my calculation of 
the amount of ice needed for his milk refrigerator, 
I say that he recommends reducing the temperature 
to 40°, when he really recommended 49°. (He might 
have made it 50° for short.) I was misled by his 
reliance on the endorsement of Mr. Carter of the 
Pennsylvania Experiment Farm, who suggested 40° 
as desirable—as I, myself, think it is. Still, justice 
to Mr. Hardin requires that his own figures be given. 
S. W. McKibben, of Augusta, Ky., referring to 
my account of the 1st Prize Jersey Cow at the Cen¬ 
tennial Cattle Show, (18 years old and still in full 
vigor), tells of a cow of his own, which is worthy 
of honorable mention. She is an imported Jersey, 
twenty-three years old, fawn and white in color. She 
has had 15 calves since she was imported 15 years 
ago,—the last one in July. She is now giving some¬ 
thing over 8 quarts of milk per day. He complains 
that under the rules of the Jersey Cattle Club, she 
cannot be entered in the Register. The answer to 
this is, that no Herd Book in a large country caw be 
a record of quality. Pedigree is a matter of record, 
—quality is a matter of standard. No standard can 
be applied without the personal attention of the 
same person, or set of persons, and in this country 
this would not be possible. If we undertook to re¬ 
cord the quality of the animals we register, the 
book would lose its value, and would become a tool 
in the hands of dishonest and unscrupulous breeders. 
I am asked by a former correspondent in Maine 
to answer the following questions : (1.) In manur¬ 
ing a crop like corn, it has been our practice to ma¬ 
nure in the hill, as well as to spread: how do you 
manure corn?—(2.) What is the best way of apply¬ 
ing lime and salt to the land?—(3.) How should 
manure be applied to the garden ?—(4.) Does it pay 
thoroughly to underdrain common lands ?—(5.) Is 
there much benefit to be derived from spreading 
swamp muck on the soil or grass-land ? 
1. I should spread all of the stable manure in¬ 
tended for this use on the sod in the autumn or 
winter, and turn it under in the spring. If I want¬ 
ed to use only a little of some special fertilizer, I 
should put it in the hill. If much were to be used, 
I should put a little of it in the hill, and spread 
the rest broadcast, just before the first hoeing. 
2. Dissolve the salt in as little water as will take 
it up, and use this water to slake the lime. Then 
spread the slaked lime on the surface of the ground. 
If on plow-land, after plowing. 
3. With a large shovel, from a large cart, and 
with the eyes shut —for rich is still not rich enough 
for profitable market-garden culture. 
4. That depends. Thorough draining is costly. If 
the common land is to have only a poor sort of 
common farming, it will not pay. If it is to be 
treated in all respects in a thoroughly good man¬ 
ner, the draining of one acre will pay even if you 
have to sell two acres of common land to cover the 
cost. That is to say: one acre of really good 
drained land, well farmed, will pay better than 
three acres of poor wet land well farmed. If the 
method of cultivation is to be slip-shod and bad, 
then the draining will not pay. Good draining is 
onone step in a progress where every step must 
be well taken. We must not raise a good crop of 
hay and then let it spoil in curing, and we must not 
spend money to get our land ready for good farm¬ 
ing, and leave it to travel its own road to the dogs. 
5. Some,—more or less according to circum¬ 
stances,—but I fancy that the benefit is more often 
less than the cost than many have supposed. 
Science Applied to Farming.—XXV. 
BY ntOF. W. O. ATWATER. 
Cotton Seed as a Fertilizer—Superphosphates. 
Mr. O. W. S., of Miss., writes: “The loss to 
Southern Agriculture in the bad management of 
Cotton seed is many millions of dollars per annum,” 
and inquires as to the best method of treating the 
seed for a fertilizer. He says that “ if it sprouts 
on the laud, it seems to lose all its nitrogen. It is 
therefore usually exposed to the weather in heaps, 
until it heats, and is killed. Heating seems to be 
essential to the forming of ammonia, but by this 
process the ammonia escapes nearly as fast as it is 
formed. Then the spot where the heap was de¬ 
posited, is so overcharged with ammonia that it 
produces nothing but straw or stalks the first year 
following.”—He speaks of the plan of composting 
with earth as excellent, but troublesome and ex¬ 
pensive, and inquires if it would not be well to 
treat it with sulphuric acid, to fix the ammonia, 
and render the phosphoric acid, potash, and other 
ash ingredients more available. 
This letter is of a sort that I like to get. It shows 
evidence of thought, and its inquiries are to the 
point. But let me, first of all, correct a misapprehen¬ 
sion as to nitrogen and ammonia, frequently found 
in agricultural literature, and-of which traces are 
seen in this letter, namely, that all the nitrogen of 
plant food must change to ammonia, before the 
plant can use it. The compounds of nitrogen, 
which occur in fresh vegetable or animal matter, 
in cotton seed or hay, blood or meat, are not, as 
such, fit for the use of the plant. They have first 
to undergo changes, by fermentation, putrefaction, 
and other forms of decay, in which the nitrogen 
enters into new forms of combination, and such as 
the plant can use. One of these, and one of the 
best for the plant, is ammonia; another, equally 
available, is nitric acid. There are other nitrogen 
compounds, no one knows exactly what, or how 
many, which plants can appropriate as food. It is 
not necessary, therefore, that the nitrogen of cot¬ 
ton seed, or of any other fertilizing material, turn 
to ammonia, before it becomes available. But 
when the seed rots, more or less will change to 
ammonia, and, unless some means is taken to pre¬ 
vent it, much of the volatile ammonia will escape 
as gas into the air, and be lost. And if the heap is 
exposed to the weather, the rain will dissolve out 
ammonia and other nitrogen compounds, and carry 
them into the soil, so that, as Mr. S. says, the soil 
where the heap stands will be overloaded with ni¬ 
trogenous plant food, and plants grown on it will 
be apt to run to stalks or straw, and yield relative¬ 
ly little seed. Putting on dilute sulphuric acid 
would change the ammonia to sulphate of ammo¬ 
nia, which, being not a gas, but a solid, would not 
evaporate. But the acid would do very little to¬ 
ward rendering the mineral ingredients, potash, 
phosphoric acid, lime, etc., available in cotton 
seed, or any other similar vegetable material, nor 
would it hinder the nitrogenous or other com¬ 
pounds in the least from being washed away by 
water. Indeed, there is no other way by which the 
fertilizing ingredients of the cotton seed can be so 
• efficiently or cheaply changed into forms fit for the 
use of the plant, as by the natural processes of de¬ 
cay. And if these processes are rightly managed, 
there will be no loss of valuable materials. What 
is wanted is a means for absorbing and retaining 
the ammonia, and other available compounds, as 
they are formed, and preventing their loss either 
by volatilizing or leaching. I have no doubt that, 
generally speaking, the cheapest and most efficient- 
way to accomplish this, is by composting with 
either stable manure, earth, or some other appro¬ 
priate material. As absorbents, muck, vegetable 
mold from forests, and earth, are excellent. The 
plan of composting cotton seed with’ stable manure 
would seem from the chemical standpoint to be very 
good indeed. I notice that it is very highly recom¬ 
mended by the Department of Agriculture of Geor¬ 
gia,some of whose formulas and directions for com¬ 
posting cotton seed with manure, superphosphates, 
and other materials, are given on another page.* 
* See Science Applied to Farming Correspondence, p. 34. 
While writing the above, a friend happened in, 
whose early life was spent in South Carolina. In 
speaking about the waste of cotton seed, he men¬ 
tioned a plantation near his own home, where a 
pile of cotton seed, “ as large as a moderate-sized 
barn,” had accumulated during a series of years, 
and of which no use was ever made. I have a very 
vivid recollection of a long winter evening’s talk I 
once had at the house of a friend in Tennessee, one 
of the largest and most substantial farmers in his 
region. He bewailed bitterly the lack of material 
to bring up his exhausted lands. What with the 
original cost of artificial fertilizers, and the expense 
of freight from the Atlantic cities, their use on his 
place was a questionable economy. The next 
morning we were about the bams, and noticed that 
no means whatever were taken to preserve the ma¬ 
nure there made. It lay scattered about on the 
ground, to be trodden over by the stock, leached 
away down the hillside by rains, or escape into the 
air, and thus be lost to the farm. 
In Circular No. 12 of the Georgia Department 
of Agriculture referred to, is the following: 
“ That it is entirely practicable to fertilize well with 
compost, every acre of land cultivated in Georgia, at an 
average outlay of $10 per ton for material not made on 
tlie farm, has been demonstrated experimentally. Each 
mule or horse, housed at night through the year, and fed 
in the stall, will deposit, with moderate bedding, one and 
a half tons of excellent stable manure, which, using 750 
pounds to the ton, will be enough of that ingredient for 
four tons. Each mule will make five bales of cotton, (an 
average,) which will yield 150 bushels of cotton seed. 
After reserving 50 bushels for planting, there will remain 
100 bushels, or 3,000 pounds, for manurial purposes, 
which, using 25 bushels, or 750 pounds to the ton, will, 
with the 750 pounds of stable manure, make 6,000 pounds 
or 1,500 pounds of each of four tons. Now add 2,000 
pounds of acid phosphate, or 500 pounds to each ton, and 
we have four tons of compost to the mule, equal in agri¬ 
cultural value to the best fertilizers on the market, as has 
been demonstrated by actual soil test, conducted for a 
series of years by the Hancock Agricultural Club, by the 
Commissioner of Agriculture, and by various other parties 
in Georgia.—If farmers prefer the manipulated com¬ 
pounds, they will find them most profitable composted 
with stable manure and cotton seed.” 
Importing Nitrogenous Fertilizers vs. Pro¬ 
ducing them on the Farm. 
A later circular from the same source estimates 
the amount paid by the farmers of Georgia for ar¬ 
tificial fertilizers in 1876 over three and one-third 
millions of dollars ($3,344,982.06)! A large propor¬ 
tion of these contain nitrogen. The nitrogenous 
material comes chiefly from fish captured on the 
Atlantic Coast, and from the waste products, dried 
blood and meat scraps, of the slaughter-houses in 
the large cities of the New England and Middle 
States. A considerable amount of the phosphoric 
acid is obtained from bone, but more comes from 
the mineral phosphates mined in South Carolina or 
the Island of Navassa. The South Carolina phos¬ 
phate rock is brought in large quantities to points 
on the coast of New York, Connecticut, Massa¬ 
chusetts, and even of Maine, where it is treated 
with sulphuric acid, and fish scrap added. The 
ammoniated superphosphates thus made are freight¬ 
ed back and 6old to planters in the South. The 
latter must of course pay the cost of double trans¬ 
portation. Leaving the cost of transport out of 
account, cotton planters still pay hundreds of 
thousands of dollars for nitrogenous material 
brought from the North. If, instead, they would 
buy the plain superphosphates without nitrogen, 
carefully save their cotton seed and the manure 
from the fowl-houses and stables, and compost 
these home products with the phosphate, they 
might have nitrogenous fertilizers as good as they 
could import, and at much less cost. 
One of the most cheering phases of the agricul¬ 
tural progress in this country is the fact that just 
this is being done by a good many southern farm¬ 
ers. Several makers of phosphates have already a 
large trade in plain superphosphates in the South. 
What 'the farmer wants in these “ plain super¬ 
phosphates,” or “acid phosphates,” is soluble 
phosphoric acid, aud he should select those which 
furnish it at the least cost.* High grade super¬ 
phosphates are offered in the Atlantic cities at 
* See Science Applied to Farming Correspondence, p. 84, 
