ho]4 
Vol. XL.—No. 1638.} 
i>-__ 
NEW YORK, JUNE 18, 1881. 
[Entered according to Act of Congress, In tho year 1881, by tho Rural New-Yorker, in the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.] 
/PRICE FIVE CENTS 
( $2,00 PER YEAR. 
ifljjra$|ical. 
GEORGE B. LOSING. 
BY PRESIDENT LEVI 8TOCKBRIDGB, 
OF AMHERST, MASS. 
Hon. Geo. E. Lobing, the new Commissioner 
of Agriculture, is a native of, and has always 
resided in, Essex County, Mass. He graduated 
at Harvard College, studied the medical pro¬ 
fession and received his M. D. Soon after 
commencing the practice of his profession, a 
change of circumstances made him the pro¬ 
prietor of a farm of about 300 acres two miles 
from the city of Salem, on which for nearly 30 
years he has made his home. Abandoning med¬ 
ical practice for which he possessed every qual¬ 
ification of success, he devoted his time, ener¬ 
gies end education to the cultivation and im¬ 
provement of his farm and made it in every 
respect one of the best in that region. For 
many years he has been a leader in all enter- 
prizes for the advancement of the agriculture 
of his native State, and on his own farm he 
has illustrated what may be accomplished in 
renovating soils, improving stock and crops, 
by high culture and a knowledge of Ihe true 
elements of success in farming. In 1858 the 
members of the Essex County Agricultural 
Society elected him as their delegate to the 
Massachusetts Board of Agriculture for three 
years, and he was subsequently re-elected for 
six consecutive terms, giving him 31 years of 
continued service on the board. During all these 
years he took an active and leading interest in 
all Us deliberations and operations. He was 
especially influential in securing the accep¬ 
tance of the national grant for agricultural 
colleges, and in all the preliminary measures 
for the establishment and successful opening 
of such a college in his 8tate. 
As delegate from the Board of Agriculture 
he visited and addressed every agricultural 
society in his own and most of the New Eng¬ 
land and Middle Stales, making himself per¬ 
fectly familiar with their agricultural condi¬ 
tion, and offering suggestions for its improve, 
ment. In the service of the board he prepared 
papers on a wide range of agricultural topics, 
which were published in the annual State re¬ 
ports, and which rank among the best of our 
agricultural literature. He has beeu an ac¬ 
tive, influential citizen as well as farmer, and 
interested in all the public movements of the 
day. He has served repeatedly in both branches 
of the State Legislature, been President of the 
Maseachneetts Senate two years, and repre¬ 
sented his fellow-eitzens two terms in Congress. 
It is undoubtedly the fact, that we have never 
had a Commissioner who possessed such varied 
talents and acquirements, such a complete 
knowledge of, and interest in, the cause he 
is called upon to serve as Geo. B. Lorlng, and 
much may be expected from his administra¬ 
tion of the affairs of the Department. 
[The portrait presented has been drawn and 
engraved from a photograph kindly sent to us 
by Dr. Lorlng atonr request.— Eds.] 
Jarm drmwmg. 
THE APPLICATION OF FABM-YARD DUNG. 
J. B. LA WES, L. L. D., F. R. S. 
The economic application of farm-yard dung 
must, to a certain extent, be based upon its 
composition, and there are two processes by 
which this may be ascertained, first by direct 
analysis, and second by calculation. 
Many years ago I published a series of cal¬ 
culations based npon the food consumed upon 
a farm of 400 acres, the quantity of straw used 
as litter aud the loss by respiration. The farm 
was estimated to haye 100 acres in turnips or 
mangels, 100 in hay, and 200 in wheat and bar¬ 
ley. The amount of dung produced was equal 
to 957 tonB (of 2,000 pounds), or about 2£ tons 
for each acre. The composition per ton was 
as follows; 
Pounds. 
Water.Moo 
Dry matter. 600 
Mine-ala.... . 5o>4 
Phosphoric acid as phosphate of lime. 10 
Potash. 101$ 
Nitrogen. 13 
This estimate agrees very well with the an¬ 
alyses made by Bonssingault, Voelcker and our¬ 
selves, and may be said to represent the compo¬ 
sition of good unfermented farm-yard manure. 
We are indebted to Dr. Voelcker for several an¬ 
alyses of the dnng in different Btages of decom¬ 
position, and he shows that only a very small 
proportion, probably not more than two pound3 
of the 13 pounds of nitrogen contained in each 
ton, is in the lorm of ammonia. Considerably 
more than 90 percent, of the whole of the dung 
consists therefore of water and wood. A large 
proportion of the manure constituents of the 
dung exists in combination with the straw or 
the solid excrements of the animals, substances 
which decompose very slowly in the soil, and 
for this reason it takes a larger amount of 
dung to produce much sffect on vegetation, 
Our experiments lead us to the conclusion that 
the influence of one dressing of dung may not 
be entirely at an end for 20 or 30 years, or per¬ 
haps even a longer period. 
With the composition of dung before me, and 
the known composition and condition of the 
various Ingredients it contains, the question 
has often occurred to me as to whether it will 
be possible to do anything by way of improv¬ 
ing itB fertilizing powers. Ought we to fix the 
ammonia, or ought we to try and manipulate 
it in some way to hasten its action ? H we can 
get the full effect of an artificial manure in one 
year, why must we wait a life-time to 6ee the 
end of one application of dung? Time is 
money ; the old-fashioned idea that a manure 
is valuable for its lasting properties will not 
bear argument, as, if true, it would then be 
better to leave bones and phosphate rock 
unground. 
With all this scientific prelude, I am bound 
to confess that I am just as helpless in regard 
to the management or improvement of dung as 
the most old-fashioned farmer. It is of no use 
fixing ammonia where there i9 hardly any to 
fix. It costs nothing to look at your dung with 
the idea of doing something to it; but you cer¬ 
tainly cannot touch it without going to some 
considerable expense. I, for my part, there¬ 
fore am content to let it alone. As I grow a 
good many mangels, I apply the greater part of 
the dung to this crop, my practice being to open 
out the furrows and apply about 20 tons per 
acre, then, after earthing np the furrows, I 
proceed to drill the seed upon the top. 
If I did not grow roots, I should apply the 
dung in Autumn to the clover or grass ; this, 
of course, would Involve exposure to the at¬ 
mosphere, but I should not fear much loss on 
this account, or at all events I do not think 
that there would be more by this process than 
by any other. 
To give some idea of onr attempt to estimate 
the loss of the ingredients contained in dnng, I 
may say that we applied it to grass land be¬ 
tween 1856 and 1868, and, having taken a crop 
of hay every year since, at the end of 20 years 
we had only got back 14 per cent, of the nitro¬ 
gen supplied In the manure, less than one-half 
of the potash, and not much more than one- 
third of the phosphoric acid. The effect of the 
dung last applied 18 years ago is still quite dis¬ 
tinct, and when it will come to an end no one 
can predict, On the whole, as regards the 
question of economy. I am therefore inclined 
to advise that the dung should be carted from 
the yards to the field, and left there in a heap 
until required tor application, or that it should 
be applied direct, from the yards. All labor 
expended npon dung adds certainly to the 
cost, but does not add with the same certainty 
to its value. 
-» «--- 
THE WEIGHT OF COW DUNG. 
I am not in the habit of publishing state¬ 
ments which I have not fully proven before 
they are made public. I have bad much occa¬ 
sion to know something of the weight and 
other properties of cow dung, and I know, as 
I Btated, that normal cow duDg always sooner 
or latter sinks in water. There undoubtedly 
are cases where a diseased or otherwise un¬ 
naturally conditioned animal may drop dnng 
which will for a time swim in the water, but 
not on it. 1 was recently looking at a very 
fine young animal when it made a very great 
effort to dung, and finally dropped a small 
amount of hard, dry matter. I caught the dnng 
and carefully placed it upon water when it for 
a moment or two floated. But it gradually 
sank into the water as the air in its pores gave 
place to the water, and in less than three min¬ 
utes after it left the animal it was at the bot¬ 
tom of the water. Every boy in the country 
and every man who was ever a boy among 
boys, has heard the expression. “How we 
hoss-dnngs swim,” when somebody thought 
some fellow w&b putting on airs. The plural 
is always used, and the expression derives its 
origin and significance from the fact that the 
separate lumps or balls of horse dung are 
more inflated than the rest of the mass and are 
supposed to feel above their fellows. I have a 
horse that is entitled to and receives some in¬ 
dulgences, among them the free range of a 
stable large enough for several common box 
stalls. In one corner of it a water-pail is kept. 
Sometimes he backs np into the corner and 
drops hisdung into the pail, but I have never 
found any of it floating the next morning. 
My observation is, that horse dung always 
sinks just as fast as the water forces the gases 
out of the pores of the dung. Sometimes a 
lew bits of undigested hay float, but the mass 
goes to the bottom as surely as lead. 
The ungracious allusion to what the writer 
terms my “ fights ” over the specific gravity of 
cream is wholly irrelevant. In the first place 
I never had any fights over it. It is true that 
a writer, much in the same spirit as shown in 
this case, at oue time undertook to disprove 
one of my positions by citing certain authori¬ 
ties in proof of a different standard of specific 
gravity from what it wa3 falsely stated I had 
set up. Fortunately I was able to show that I 
had wholy disclaimed the figures quoted or 
any other as a “standard” and also to show 
that iu every one of the cases cited against me 
the samples of cream had been of a wholly ex¬ 
ceptional quality aud in no case taken from 
the whole cream of whole milk. I never un¬ 
dertook to say that cow dung or horse dung 
might not be found that would float for a time, 
or to disprove that iron under certain circum¬ 
stances will swim. I only spoke of the sub¬ 
stances in their normal condition. Quibbling 
is not becoming iu men who write for the in¬ 
formation of the public. O. 8. Bliss. 
Georgia, Vt. 
-- 
Pulverized Top Soil as a Mulch. —In re¬ 
gard to cultivated soil acting as a mulch, my 
opinion of the matter is this—that plants dur¬ 
ing a dry time depend more upon moisture from 
below the surface than from above, aud that the 
moisture is brought up by the capillary action 
of the soil, and that it the soil be cultivated- 
broken—near the surface, the capillary action 
is largely destroyed to the depth of several 
Inches, and that this broken soil quickly dries 
out iu the same manner that a leaf withers, 
that is broken from the parent stem. The 
capillary tubes below the surface, nearer to the 
roots of the plant, continue to act, however, 
aud consequently the plant receives more 
I moisture and shows less effect from dry 
GEORGE B. LOFJNG, Commissioner of Agriculture. 
From a Photograph.—Fig. 300. 
