FOOD OF CALVES. 
235 
it—it was the means by which the salts minis¬ 
tering to vegetation became localised and dis¬ 
tributed through the soil, and retained there 
until they are required for vegetation. It was 
necessary that when the alkali of a salt is laid 
hold of by a soil, some provision should exist 
for the neutralisation of the acid with which it 
was combined; for all other sorts, lime per¬ 
formed this usual office, but it had nothing to 
fall back upon for its own salts. Sulphate, mu¬ 
riate, or nitrate of lime, when passed through a 
soil, would come through unchanged. This, 
however, did not extend to lime, itself, nor to its 
carbonate, when dissolved in carbonic acid, as 
it is found in most waters. Quicklime, when 
dissolved in water, is removed by passing the 
water through most soils containing clay; and 
carbonate of lime, in solution, is so effectually 
removed that hard water may be softened by 
the same process. 
It was not to be supposed that we could go on 
filtering indefinitely with the separation of the 
salts contained in the liquid. On the contrary, 
the limit was soon reached; but although small 
in per-centage quantity, the power was in ref¬ 
erence to the soil enormously great. He had 
found that a pure clay would absorb, perhaps, 
two tenths per cent, of its weight of ammonia— 
that is to say, 1,000 grams would separate 2 
grains of ammonia; and from reasons which 
need not then be noticed, a loam, or a well-cul¬ 
tivated clay soil would absorb nearly twice as 
much. Now every inch in depth of soil over an 
acre of ground weighed about 100 tons. Con¬ 
sequently 10 inches of depth of such soil would 
weigh 1,000 tons, and would be adequate to com¬ 
bine with and retain 2 tons of ammonia, a quan¬ 
tity which would be furnished by about 12 tons 
of guano. Now one sixtieth of this power would 
suffice for the preservation of the ammonia of 
an outside dose of guano, consequently he was 
justified in saying that the property was practi¬ 
cally of immense activity. 
Obviously, if there was a provision in the soil 
for the retention of the salts of manure, and for 
the ammonia and other products of the decom¬ 
position of animal and vegetable matter, the 
soil was the proper place for those decomposi¬ 
tions to go on, and no matter how remote the 
period when the crop would be taken, it would 
be perfectly safe to get the manure into the 
land as soon as practicable after its production. 
Again, the equable distribution was a point, also, 
which seemed of considerable importance; for, 
if it was an absolute necessity that a new class 
of compounds was found in the soil as soon as 
the manure reached it, it seemed to follow that 
those compounds furnished the elements of nu¬ 
trition to plants; consequently we should seek 
to produce them by every means in our power. 
Liquid manuring, wherever practicable, was an 
effectual way of securing this distribution. In 
the case of artificial manures, that is to say, 
manures composed of chemical salts, much sim¬ 
plicity was introduced by the new discovery. 
Henceforth we must regard the different salts, 
(those of ammonia, for instance,) as of value in 
relation to the price of ammonia, or other bases 
contained in them, since they are all alike when 
incorporated with the soil. 
In liquid manuring it had been usual to think 
that the application must be made to grass, or 
to land bearing some crop; but now that it was 
known that the land, not the plant, retains the 
manure, no theoretical difficulty could arise in 
the use of liquid mannure for arable land. 
FOOD OF CALVES. 
Food of an inferior quality, or a limited sup¬ 
ply of the better kinds, will not rear and fatten 
animals in number, nor of an improved organ¬ 
isation—the growth is stunted, the maturity is 
deferred, and the carcass is faulty in every re¬ 
spect of quantity and quality. The very first 
existence of the animal is rendered nugatory by 
the feeding of the calf from the pail, with the 
milk, instead of suckling, and by the subititution 
of broths and juicy preparations for the nutri¬ 
ment of the dam [?]. These insufficient materi¬ 
als spoil the animals at the very first outset— 
the intestinal offals are enlarged, the growth is 
stopped, and also the acquisition of the stamina 
of organic vigor, which forms the very first 
property in the value of animal life. Without 
constitutional vigor, the organic functions are 
unable to perform their offices, and the food of 
the very best quality is not properly decom¬ 
posed and assimilated. 
Every experience shows that no substances 
yet known will nurse a young calf so well as 
the mother’s milk; and the quantity of saliva is 
wanting which is engendered by the mouth 
sucking the teat, and which is so very useful in 
promoting the action of the stomach. The suck¬ 
ling of the calf forms the foundation of the fu¬ 
ture animal. For the purpose of making but¬ 
ter and cheese it only remains to allot a portion 
of the cows for that purpose, and the others for 
suckling, each purpose being kept separate and 
distinct, without the hurtful intermixture of 
starving the animal to procure the other pro¬ 
ducts of milk. Each purpose must be free of 
the other .—Agricultural Gazette. 
Everything Should be Done Systematically. 
—It is astonishing how much time and labor are 
thrown away by some farmers solely for want 
of a system. They go to work just as it happens, 
in a wrong time, perhaps, and in great haste, 
half do the work, or leave it unfinished, and 
then suffer the consequences. There is another 
thing very reprehensible; and that is, leaving 
everything where it was last used, and when it 
is wanted for use again, some time must be 
spent in finding it, to say nothing of the injury 
done to the implements by leaving them all the 
time exposed to the weather. “ A place for eve¬ 
rything and everything in its place,” is the true 
doctrine for farmers. 
A Disinfecting Agent.— Mix four parts of dry, 
ground plaster of Paris with one part of fine 
charcoal, by weight, and sow them around the 
premises affected with any unpleasant odor, 
arising from decayed animal matter, and the 
gases producing the odor will directly be ab¬ 
sorbed. 
