1878.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
91 
the Secretary of the N. Y. State Agricultural 
Society, and we give it place as an official docu¬ 
ment. Some of the figures given in the table 
are different from those published in other pa¬ 
pers, which is due to our having corrected typo¬ 
graphical errors at the request of the Secretary. 
This document would have carried much more 
weight with it had the Committee aimed at get- 
tine: a correct “standard of values and method 
of computation,” as without this the whole 
report is “much ado about nothing.” 
Although it will offend several very ex¬ 
cellent. people, we are glad that the Society has 
presented these analyses. There are several 
houses mentioned as having sold poor guano 
who would not, in our opinion, knowingly do 
an unfair thing. It will benefit these dealers, 
inasmuch as it will make them careful hereafter 
as to the quality of the article they sell. The 
Manhattan Fertilizing Company think, and 
justly, that the analysis of their product should 
not have been published by the side of analyses 
of Peruvian guanos, but in contrast with 
other superphosphates. It must bo borne 
in mind that there is more than ever need 
that dealers and purchasers should have 
an analysis of their guano, as that brought 
from Peru is much more variable than formerly 
—some of the “genuine” being nearly worth¬ 
less. There should be a law in every State 
regulating the sale of fertilizers, as there are 
few things so susceptible of adulterations which 
the well-intentioned retailer and the farmer are 
unable to detect. Sausages and guano are al¬ 
ways purchased “ upon honor.” 
Ogden Farm Papers.—No. 37. 
A part of my last day in London was passed 
with Dr. Augustus Voelcker, the chemist of the 
Royal Agricultural Society, and one of the 
most efficient agents in the improvement of the 
agriculture of England. Although he is not, 
and I think never has been, a farmer, the most 
practical of our practical farmers could not fail 
to appreciate the value of the services that his 
chemical knowledge and his strong common- 
sense have enabled him to render. His contri¬ 
butions to the Journal of his Society, especially 
those on the use of clover as a preparatory crop 
for wheat, and on the treatment of farm-yard 
manure—are well known in America, and they 
have had much influence in modifying the 
writings of our agricultural teachers. They 
have done more than any other articles with 
which I am acquainted, to reconcile the teach¬ 
ings of science with the methods of practice— 
or rather they have shown that, in two impor¬ 
tant particulars, the practice was right and 
sound, and the opposing recommendations of 
the chemists were founded on a misapprehen¬ 
sion of the scientific facts. He showed in the 
case of clover that not only might an immense 
crop be taken from the soil without exhausting 
it, but that in its growth (it being a vigorous 
feeder) it searched out from the hidden recesses 
of the soil, and took from compounds which 
were really out of the range of the feeding pow¬ 
ers of other plants, an abundant supply of nutri¬ 
ment, which it converted from practically inert 
matter to organized vegetable matter. Of this, 
a very large proportion is stored up in the roots, 
so that although we may remove all the stem 
and leaf of a whole season’s growth—and with 
it a iarge amount of matter which has been sup¬ 
plied from the soil—yet, the roots, which remain 
to decay, yield a great increase to the soil’s 
stock of available mineral planMbod, to say 
nothing of the carbonaceous matter(taken from 
the atmosphere) which, in the decomposition of 
the roots, performs the various mechanical and 
chemical offices of manure. Ilis was not the 
first nor has it been by any means the only 
statement of this general fact, but he stated it 
more clearly and more convincingly than any 
other writer with whose works I am acquainted. 
In connection with the subject of the treat¬ 
ment of farm-yard manure, his investigations 
have taken a somewhat more original character, 
and his explanations have been of more practi¬ 
cal value. We had been taught that from the 
time when the manure was first voided by the 
animal it was subject to constant loss from the 
evaporation of ammonia—its most valuable in¬ 
gredient—and that consequently it was the only 
safe plan to compost it with muck or some other 
absorbent material. Dr. Voelcker proved, by a 
series of analyses of manure at different stages 
of decomposition, and after various sorts of 
treatment, that there is no formation, of volatile 
ammonia except when the mass is sufficiently 
large for the accumulation of enough heat to 
favor an active decomposition, and that even 
then there is no evaporation of ammonia, for the 
reason that the organic acids which are simul¬ 
taneously formed—are always sufficient to take 
it up and form non-volatile compounds. At the 
same time, although these compounds are not 
subject to evaporation, they are highly soluble, 
and the juices flowing from the dung-heap, and 
the rain-water passing through it, remove it 
most easily. Consequently, it is of the greatest 
importance that manure should be kept under 
cover —if it is kept in store at all. The most im¬ 
portant deduction from these investigations is, 
that the much-reiterated recommendation of 
agricultural writers that on no account should 
manure be taken to the field (unless to be com¬ 
posted) until it could be almost immediately 
plowed under the soil, was not well founded. 
The best practice of all, is one which many of 
the most successful farmers have always fol¬ 
lowed—and against which the agricultural 
press has leveled its biggest guns—the practice, 
namely, of hauling manure afield as soon as a 
few loads have accumulated, spreading it at 
once over the ground, and plowing it under 
early or late or not at all, according to circum¬ 
stances; the best effects following its application 
to the surface of grass-land, or its harrowing 
into the very topmost film of plo-wed land. 
In neither of these cases can ammonia escape, 
because no volatile ammonia is formed, while 
the soluble parts—and all becomes soluble in 
time—are distributed through the soil by the 
water.of rains the more evenly, the nearer to 
the surface they lie. When they are once ab¬ 
sorbed by the soil they are held in an available 
form until required by the roots of plants. Of 
course, this is too short a statement of the de¬ 
ductions of an elaborate investigation to give a 
very fair idea of it. My object is only to sug¬ 
gest the very important service it has rendered 
to agriculture. 
I found Dr. Voelcker a cordial, energetic, 
hearty, middle-aged German, speaking English 
well, and with just sufficient slowness, and “ ac¬ 
cent,” to emphasize his expressions. His offices 
are filled with books, cases of specimens of phos- 
phatic.rocks, guano, linseed cake, rape-cake, cot¬ 
ton-seed cake, superphosphates, mails, and all 
manner of things with which it is his province 
as an agricultural chemist to deal, and the pro¬ 
fessional-looking bottles and retorts which al¬ 
ways accumulate about such an establishment. 
Our talk took the direction of practical matters, 
and it may bo interesting to sketch some of the 
leading features of what I heard. (I mere]}' 
condense his own statements as I recall them.) 
The question of using sewage in English 
agriculture is by no means settled; thus far the 
experiments are more often failures than suc¬ 
cesses ; the Earl of Warwick’s farm at Leam¬ 
ington and the Corporation’s Farm at Croyden 
are profitable, the others (there are mail}') are 
usually failures. The difficulties are of two sorts: 
First, the drainage must be complete and 
thorough (either naturally or artificially)—indeed 
this would be the case if only the purest water 
■were used, for all arable soils contain organic 
matter which is constantly undergoing decom¬ 
position, and healthy decomposition requires 
the action of air; if the land is not drained, the 
water fills it, prevents the entrance of air, and 
causes the decomposition either to assume an 
unhealthy form or to be arrested at an inter¬ 
mediate stage. In either case, the resulting 
compounds are of an offensive character and are 
poisonous to the cultivated plants. As an ex¬ 
ample of this, suppose we have a cylinder, say 
2 feet high, filled with ordinary surface-soil, and 
with a hole at the bottom for drainage; every 
day we pour upon this enough clear water to 
saturate it. Tiic surplus water will escape 
through the outlet, air will enter the soil to fill 
the spaces the water has vacated, a healthy de¬ 
composition of the organic matter will take 
place, and a plant growing on the soil will 
thrive. If, now, the hole be stopped, so that no 
water can escape, and if enough be added from 
day to day to keep the soil saturated, no air can 
enter, the plant will die, fungi or other low 
forms of vegetation will appear, and at the end 
of a fortnight of moderately warm weather, if 
the soil be turned out, it will be found to have 
become a stinking, putrid mass, unfit for the 
growth of any of the cultivated plants. The 
same thing occurs in farming on a large scale. 
■Whether for sewage farming or in ordinary 
irrigation, unless the land is well drained, more 
harm than good will be done by t he use of large 
quantities of water during growing weather. 
And, indeed, if we have only to consider the 
water of rains or of springs, we may sat isfy our¬ 
selves that the good or the ill effect will be in 
direct proportion to the degree in which the 
natural or artificial drainage allows the water to 
subside and fresh air to enter to take its place. 
If the saturation is complete, we have swamp 
rushes, skunk cabbage, and mosses. If the 
drainage is perfect, ve have sweet and nutri¬ 
tious herbage. If the land is half-drained and 
half-drowned, we may sow good seed, but in 
time coarse and innutritious plants will usurp 
the ground and the profit of our farming will 
suffer. (It seemed to me that the Doctor stated 
the fundamental theory of drainage more briefly 
and more clearly than some of its special pro¬ 
fessors have succeeded in doing.) In sewage 
farming, the quantity of water used is so large, 
and the impurities it contains are so considera¬ 
ble, that the necessity for ready filtration and 
for the free ingress of air is so great that it can 
succeed only on a light soil, and only with 
plants which will bear such conditions. 
Second: It is an important condition of 
success that a ready market be found for green 
grass, which is the sheet-anchor of sewage farm- 
i n o'; You grow enormous crops—sometimes 
100 tons per acre in a season, and you can not 
make it into hay by any process now discovered 
(if you could, it would make 18 tons of well- 
dried hay per acre)—and you must find a mar¬ 
ket then and there. This you can do only by 
