1876 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
875 
rest. He was slouching under trees, begging at the 
farm-house doors, frightening the children at the 
spring, making friends with the watch-dogs, or 
shuffling along the road, with that peculiar gait, 
the bundled up feet, the hang-dog look, the appear¬ 
ance of being an athlete or a panther in disguise, 
or a maniac undisguised, that is peculiar to the 
breed. One thinks of Sing Sing, and if lie has ever 
visited that famous prison, and seen the familiarity 
that exists, or did exist, between the keepers and 
the kept, and seen the plainest and most obviously, 
necessary or beneficial laws broken by both, and 
even, as when I was present a few years ago, by one 
of the State Inspectors, appointed by the Legisla¬ 
ture from their own number, it would hardly sur¬ 
prise him to know that there had been a general 
stampede or flight of New York jail-birds, and that 
like a cloud of locusts they had settled upon this 
part of New Jersey. At present we are having 
quite enough of this sort of thing, and it would take 
but a breath to rouse a burning indignation among 
farmers and country dwellers, that would make it 
hot for the tramps. They are not prepossessing, 
not agreeable people to meet, not adapted to make 
the walk to and from school pleasant for little 
girls. We associate with them stories of kidnap¬ 
ped children—think about Charlie Ross, of thefts 
in the neighborhood, (Mr. Wood lost his best set of 
harness not long ago), of our own two score of fat 
pullets taken off the roost, and fairly grudge the 
bowl of skim-milk and slice of ham and bread that 
we give more from fear than from charity. When 
they refuse the milk and ask for coffee, and want it 
hot, that is too much. Then we know they have 
milked the cows in the night, and are at our door 
only to see if there are any spoons lymg about. So 
somehow the dog is unchained, and is with great 
difficulty restrained from doing actual violence, and 
the tramp is ordered off to the road; his milk 
poured into the swill barrel, and his slice of bread 
afterwards picked up at the gate. 
Protection Societies. 
We have an admirable law in New Jersey, which 
I believe is of general application throughout the 
State, which permits the citizens of any township 
to organize a “Protection Society,” which, under 
the authority of the Governor and County Court, 
may appoint marshals with powers similar those of 
city police, while the officers have powers like those 
of Justices of the Peace. Some of these societies 
have exceedingly complete detective systems and 
detective officers, amateur detectives, so to speak, 
who have been very successful, both in preventing 
crime and in bringing criminals to justice. I have 
been told that in the township of Englewood no 
tramp is allowed to sleep or to pass the night on the 
highway, or to be upon the highway after nightfall, 
but is promptly provided with a lodging at a station- 
house in the village, which he pays for by work on 
the road the next day, and if he is not civil, and 
does not work well, he is “ sent up ” to the county 
jail for a longer 'or shorter term. This naturally 
leads the tramps to prefer to go round. Were such 
societies more general, the tramp problem might 
quickly find solution, at least in this State, and the 
click of the stone hammers would have a sweetness 
added to its tone, which it never before possessed. 
We greatly need some cheap and efficient means 
for providing 
Broken Stone for Roads, 
and who knows but Providence is kindly offering 
us in the despised tramp a long looked for blessing ? 
Blake’s Stone-crusher, like his nut-cracker, is a 
triumph of art, but it is a 'ponderous piece of me¬ 
chanism, needing a steam engine to run it; and as 
some of the corn buskers have failed simply because 
it costs more to haul the corn to them, and cart the 
stalks and corn away again, than to husk the corn 
where it grew. So for our common roads it would 
be cheaper to break the stone on the road, thau to 
use the steam crusher. I think any town might 
well afford to give a man a good lodging with sup¬ 
per and breakfast, for breaking a cubic yard of 
granite or trap-rock into pieces as bigas butternuts, 
and I concede that the stone might be measured 
after it was broken. It matters not how long it 
takes a man to do the job, time is of no account to 
a tramp ; he has too much of a good thing, and we 
do him a real favor to help him dispose of a part of 
his stock profitably. 
I despair of ever seeing fine, broken stone appre¬ 
ciated for road-making and road-mending. Every 
road should have a well drained hard bottom, and 
this is usually not hard to secure. Every hard-bot¬ 
tomed road should be dressed with nothing but 
fine broken stone. It will pack under wheels and 
the tread of teams like a floor, and will need so lit¬ 
tle repair, that with nearly perfect roads our high¬ 
way tax would not be greater thau now r . Full load¬ 
ed teams might always pass ; pleasure driving would 
be a happiness ; wagon-makers’ bills would be re¬ 
duced by half, and yet the wheelwrights would 
make a better living, because so many more vehi¬ 
cles would be in constant use. I believe sometimes 
in taking a Utopian view even of the tramp question. 
How to Save and Keep Manure. 
There is no question more frequently or seriously 
considered by the farmer, than how he shall get, 
keep, and spend an adequate supply of manure ; 
nor is there anything about the farm which is of 
greater importance to its successful management, 
than the manure heap. There are few farmers now 
left who pretend to ignore this feed for the laud', 
and few localities, even in the newer Western 
States, where manure now is thought to be a nui¬ 
sance. We have gradually come to the inevitable 
final eud of our‘“virgin farms,” and have now 
either to save what is left of their wonderful 
natural fertility, or to restore them slowly and la¬ 
boriously to a profitable condition. We have 
reached the end of our tether, and are obliged to 
confess that we have trespassed over the line which 
bounds the territory of the locust, or have improv¬ 
ed the face of the country so much, that the pro¬ 
tecting timber being removed, the water supply is 
becoming precarious, and springs, brooks, and 
rivers no longer flow as they did heretofore. To 
some extent the tide of emigration, which has 
flowed westward so many years, is now eddying or 
even ebbiug, and the cheap, worn lands of the East 
are finding purchasers, who undertake to bring 
them back to their former condition. At the same 
time Eastern farmers are discovering more and 
more certainly that they must iucrease their crops, 
and make one acre produce as much as two have 
heretofore done. The only way in which either of 
these classes can succeed, is by keeping sufficient 
stock to manure their farms liberally; to feed these 
animals so skillfully and well, that they shall pay 
for their feed with a profit, and in addition leave a 
supply of rich manure, with which the soil can be 
kept in a productive state, and to save and use the 
pranure with such care that no particle of it be 
lost. It is not every farmer who can procure all 
the manure he needs ; but very many can save what 
they have, with far greater economy than they now 
do ; and this, although it may seem a question 
secondary to that of getting manure, is really of 
primary importance ; for by using what one has to 
better purpose, he opens a way to increase his sup¬ 
ply. We have found this to be the casein our own 
experience, and by strict attention to saving and 
preserving every particle of manure in its best con¬ 
dition, we have succeeded in so enlarging our sup¬ 
ply of fodder, that the number of stock that could 
be fed was largely increased each year, and very 
soon it was necessary to go out and buy animals to 
consume the surplus. To bring a farm into im¬ 
proved condition, there is no cheaper or more ef¬ 
fective method than this. 
The ordinary management of manure, in open 
bam-yards, where it is washed by rains, dried by 
the sun’s scorching heat, and wasted by every wind 
that blows, is the worst that is possible. In this 
way half or more of the value of the manure is 
lost. By figuring up what it would cost to pur¬ 
chase a quantity of manure equal to what is thus 
lost, the costliness of this common method would 
be discovered, and the question how much could 
be afforded to take care of the manure would be 
settled. When properly littered, one cow or ox 
will make a ton of manure every month, if the liq¬ 
uid as well as the solid portion is saved. Ten head 
would thus make 120 tons, or 60 two-horse wagon 
loads in a year. A pair of horses will make as 
much manure as one cow, or 12 tons in the year. A 
huudred sheep, if yarded every night and well 
littered, will make 100 tons of manure in the year, 
and ten pigs will work up a wagon load in a month, 
if supplied with sufficient coarse material. The 
stock of a 100-acre farm, which should consist of at 
least 10 cows, 10 head of steers, heifers, and calves, 
a pair of horses, 100 sheep, and 10 pigs, would theu 
make in the aggregate, 316 tons of manure every 
year, or sufficient to give 12 tons per acre every 
fourth year. If this were well cared for, it would 
be, in effect, equal to double the quantity of ordi¬ 
nary yard manure ; and if a plenty of swamp muck 
cou-ld be procured, at least six hundred tons of the 
best manure could be made upon a 100-acre farm. 
If this were the rule instead of a rare exception, or 
only a possibility, what a change would appear up¬ 
on the face of the country, and what an addition 
would be made to the wealth of the nation ! 
Pits for Keeping Manure. 
-O- 
The first requisite to the economical saving and 
handling of the manure, is a manure pit. The size 
needed can easily be calculated, by allowing one 
cubic yard for every ton to be made. For COO tons 
of manure made yearly, a pit of a capacity of 300 
cubic yards should be made, as it would be emp¬ 
tied twice in the year. A pit 30 feet long, 15 wide, 
and 41 feet below the surface, would hold 300 tons, 
Fig. 1. —SECTION OP MANURE PIT. 
if the contents were heaped 41 feet above the sur¬ 
face. The simplest manure pit is a mere hollow 
in the ground, which prevents the liquid portion 
from flowing away from it in odorous streams here 
and there, but permits it to sink into the ground 
and escape. The first improvement consists in mak¬ 
ing the hollow water-proof, so as to retain the liq¬ 
uid part. This may be done by cementing the bot¬ 
tom of ilro hollow. The next improvement would 
Fig. 2.— SECTION OF PIT WITH DRAIN IN CENTER. 
be to build a retaining wall of brick or stone, to 
hold the manure heap, and to make a drain by 
which the surplus liquid matter might be carried 
off into a cistern. This method, which is very 
cheap, simple, and effective, is illustrated at figure 
1, in which the walls are shown at a, a, and the 
drain by the dotted lines below the surface of the 
ground. A further improvement may be made, as 
shown at figure 5, by sloping the bottom, c, c, from 
each side to the center, inside of the retaining walls, 
Fig. 3.— GROUND PLAN OF FIG. 2. 
a, a, and placing a drain at the lowest point, to 
carry off and collect the liquid manure. At b is an 
opening at either of the end walls, through which 
a cart or wagon may be driven, to unload or remove 
the manure. These openings may be left open or 
closed by gates. At figure 3 is shown the ground 
plan of this manure pit, with the opening in the 
walls referred to, If desired, there may be two 
