THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
February 27 
154 
stiff wind from the northwest, the mercury has never 
been lower than 60 degrees at any time, and then on 
one or two of the coldest mornings. With seven 
radiators we are using about 1% ton of coal per 
month, with no part of the house closed at any time 
except the kitchen. We are always w r arm while sev¬ 
eral of my neighbors, with hot air, were obliged to 
close part of their houses and then suffered more or 
less with cold. The cost of installing steam is more 
than hot air, and hot water more than steam. With 
hot air no part of a cellar can be used for vegetable 
storage, while with steam, by covering the pipes and 
a partition, it still can be used for this purpose as 
well as before. With steam you can put the heat 
where you want it at any time; with hot air it will 
go where it has a mind to and when it wants to. With 
steam there are no pipes to freeze and burst; heat 
can be started through pipes and radiators with cold 
water in the boiler in 15 minutes after starting fire; 
is automatic, requiring attention but twice a day, 
night and morning. The plant cost ready to put fire 
into $223 with a full guarantee to do the work re¬ 
quired. Brother farmers, keep the women folks warm 
and you will bask in the sunshine of their good 
humor, a. c. innis. 
Connecticut. 
Good Words for Hot Air. 
Five years ago I put in a hot-air furnace at an ex¬ 
pense of $115, which has given almost perfect satis¬ 
faction from every standpoint. We have used in the 
furnace soft coal, and to heat the whole house when 
necessary, and to heat about half the house all the 
time, we have used from a ton to a ton and a fourth 
more coal than we used to run a parlor stove which 
also heated a sleeping room. In early Fall and late 
Spring we have used a little wood. Now for a pointer 
to the one about to purchase a furnace. Look at the 
clean-out apparatus and buy the one that will clean 
perfectly with the least bother. The best furnace 
among a dozen competitors to-day is the one that 
cleans the most perfectly with a given amount of 
trouble. e. d. bawson. 
Pennsylvania. _ 
BRIEF FERTILIZER TALKS. 
The Value of Leached Manure. 
I have a tank holding 75 solid feet. I fill this with 
fresh manure from the stable, than pump on water, 
which drains away on to a strawberry bed. When this 
is leached until the water is not colored, what fertilizer 
is there left? Our scientific professor answers: “Nothing 
but dirt.” a. d. f. 
Indianola, Iowa. 
It is safe to say that the “scientific professor” who 
makes such an answer does not know his business. 
If you burn a ton of horse manure so that every bit 
that will burn is consumed you would have only about 
60 pounds of ash left. This is all that you can rea¬ 
sonably call “dirt.” If we think for a moment we can 
see that we are not likely to leach all the fertility out 
of the manure. We may put wood ashes in a box and 
soak water through until it would seem that nothing 
is left and still find both potash and phosphoric acid 
in the leached ashes. If we cannot leach the plant 
food out of the fine and soluble ashes ho.w can we ex¬ 
pect to get it all out of manure where it is held in 
straw or undigested hay or grain? You make a mis¬ 
take in supposing that the color of the water indicates 
the presence of plant food. Nitrogen, the most valu¬ 
able part of the manure, is colorless, as you may see 
by looking at a bottle of ammonia water. A good 
share of the plant food in manure is insoluble. It is 
in straw and other organic forms, and could not be 
entirely removed until these were completely decayed. 
You could not possibly wash this organic plant food 
out. While you probably leach out the soluble and 
active part of the plant food, you leave on the average 
nearly half the total plant food in the tank. What 
you leave behind might not be available at once, but 
it would become so as it decayed and this should be 
spread and plowed into the soil. When we think of 
this we see that a high-grade fertilizer is put together 
somewhat in imitation of good manure. The manure 
contains nitrogen in different forms. The part that is 
washed out by the water will feed crops at once, while 
that which does not leach will give up more and more 
as it decays, thus covering the entire growing season. 
In like manner a high-grade fertilizer is made of sev¬ 
eral different forms of nitrogen, such as nitrate of 
soda, blood or cotton-seed meal, fish, tankage or bone. 
The nitrate is like the manure water which runs from 
this Iowa tank, while the others decay and give up 
their nitrogen in regular order. If we used nitrate of 
soda alone it would be like using nothing but this 
manure water, while if we use tankage alone it would 
be like using the leached manure. 
To study another side of this question, we may go 
over some very valuable experiments at the New Jer¬ 
sey Experiment Station. Cow manure (solid and 
liquids mixed) was left exposed to the weather for 
different periods. On an average of 82 days of such 
exposure the loss was 51 pounds out of every 100 of 
nitrogen, 51 of phosphoric acid, and 61 of potash; that 
is more than half the total contained in the manure. 
The average cow on the college farm gave 70 pounds 
of solid and liquid manure each day. This amounts 
to 12.78 tons per year from one cow, or 117 pounds of 
nitrogen, 77 of phosphoric acid, and 89 of potash. If 
we put it in another way this means the same as 731 
pounds nitrate of soda, 550 pounds acid phosphate, 
and 178 pound muriate of potash, or 1,459 pounds of 
fertilizer analyzing eight per cent of nitrogen, five of 
phosphoric acid and six of potash. That is what we 
would get from a well-fed cow if every bit of the 
plant food could be saved. Now when that manure 
was exposed for 82 days so that the rain washed 
through it, there were leached out of it 60 pounds of 
nitrogen, 39 phosphoric acid and 54 potash. It was 
just like buying and throwing away 380 pounds ni¬ 
trate of soda, 277 of acid phosphate and 108 of muriate 
of potash. The leaching through the tank would 
probably not take out any more plant food than this. 
At a cost of $2 per ton for manure this loss would 
represent $11.50 from one cow! We shall discuss the 
value of the leached manure later. Our Iowa friend 
wants to get the soluble plant food out of the manure, 
so as to force his garden crops. In ordinary farming 
this is just the thing not to do. We want to keep all 
the value in the manure until it goes into the ground. 
Prof. Voorhees suggests two methods of saving this 
great loss of plant food: 
The first is to cart the manure from the yard and 
spread upon the land as soon as possible, after it is 
made, thus preventing destructive fermentation and loss 
from leaching, the water passing through in the fields, 
carrying the soluble constituents into the soil, where 
they are held. By this method the minimum loss would 
result, though as shown by the experiments, the avail¬ 
ability of the solid portion would be less for the first 
crop than if the manure had begun to ferment before 
applying. The labor saved in the handling, however, 
would compensate for the decreased availability of the 
fresh manure. The disadvantage of this system is that 
there are times when it is impossible to go upon the 
land, as, for example, after heavy rains; besides, there 
are farms where the land is so rolling that if the ma¬ 
nures were applied in the Winter, losses would be likely 
to occur because of the opportunity for washing into the 
valleys and streams, and finally, there may be no field 
A PAINT-PROTECTED TREE. Fig. 65. 
upon which the manure can be applied, particularly in 
the Summer season when crops are grow'ing. Another 
method suggested is to store the manure in a covered 
yard, add absorbents in the form of cut straw or corn¬ 
stalks, and keep the manure level and well packed; then 
haul to the fields, whenever it is convenient, or when¬ 
ever it seems best to make an application to a particu¬ 
lar crop. By this method possible leaching is prevented 
by the covering, and fermentation is regulated and losses 
prevented by keeping moist and well packed. 
In cases where the manure is hauled soon after it is 
made, the use of so-called preservers will materially 
lessen the losses in the stable, besides securing the fur¬ 
ther advantage of purifying the air in them. Fermenta¬ 
tion begins very soon after the manure is dropped, and 
if chemical absorbents as plaster, kainit, acid phosphate, 
etc., are used, the ammonia will be largely fixed and held 
In a soluble form in the manure. If the two latter are 
used, naturally potash and phosphoric acid are added, 
which will make the product much richer in these con¬ 
stituents and save a separate application. Where any 
of these are used, they may be distributed in the gutters 
in the stables at the rate of one pound per day for three 
to five cows. 
What Form of Nitrogen? 
I was much interested in your reply to F. S. K., page 
57, in regard to the value of nitrogen in different or¬ 
ganic forms, but I did not think the answer was quite 
sufficient. When we buy fertilizer we read on the 
package that it contains so much nitrogen. A certain 
amount of it is available or soluble and so much in¬ 
soluble. Of the insoluble w'e take no account, but in the 
soluble or available, does it make any difference from 
what source it is derived, or if it does, is it not better 
derived from some source that is slow to bring into ni¬ 
trate form, as there would be more unavailable to be 
changed by atmospheric action for the future crops? 
Lodi Center, N. Y. l. w. o. 
You seem to have the nitrogen mixed up with the 
phosphoric acid. Most fertilizer tags state the full 
amount of nitrogen or “ammonia,” but seldom tell 
anything more about it. The phosphoric acid, how¬ 
ever, is given as you state, and it certainly does make 
a difference what either substance comes from. We 
will try in several short articles to make this clearer. 
If a man buys a horse he examines his legs, “wind,” 
shape, color and other points. This is his “analysis” 
of the horse, since observation and study of horses 
have taught him what these points are worth in fig¬ 
uring the horse’s value. If he was in doubt, and the 
horse was a valuable one, he would ask some expert 
to help him—that is, some man who knew more about 
a horse and thus had a better “analysis.” Now in 
buying a fertilizer a farmer should also go by “an¬ 
alysis,” but not by outward signs as he does with the 
horse. Some people smell of a fertilizer and rub it 
in their fingers and think they know all about it, but 
they do not. I wish I had the millions of dollars that 
have been lost because farmers sampled fertilizers 
with their noses. We must learn to make use of the 
station bulletins in buying fertilizers, and not buy 
what the agents tell us. Suppose we are asked to buy 
John Smith’s brand. Why take the agent’s tag any 
more than you would the opinion of the man you buy 
a horse of? We should send to the experiment sta¬ 
tion, get a copy of the fertilizer bulletin, and study it. 
In this we might find several of John Smith’s brands 
described as follows. I will take the nitrogen alone 
and the phosphoric acid and potash later: 
Nitrogen. Total 
guar- 
Ni- Ammo- Organic Total an- 
trates. 
nla. 
matter. 
food. 
teed. 
Potato fertilizer . . 
... 2.70 
0.44 
1.13 
4.27 
3.69 
Corn fertilizer . 
.... 
1.50 
1.50 
1.64 
Fruit fertilizer ..... 
.... 
1,54 
1.95 
1.61 
Grass fertilizer ... 
... 5.70 
.... 
2.10 
7.80 
7.38 
This will give us a good idea as to what the nitro¬ 
gen comes from. The nitrates come from nitrate of 
soda, the ammonia from sulphate of ammonia and the 
organic nitrogen from blood, tankage or some one of 
a dozen different substances. Take the first fertilizer 
mentioned; 54 pounds of the total nitrogen are found 
as nitrates, and we know that means nitrate of soda. 
As there are 16 pounds of nitrogen in 100 of nitrate 
we know the ton contains not far from 340 pounds. 
There are about nine pounds of nitrogen as ammonia, 
and as sulphate of ammonia contains 20 per cent we 
feel safe in saying that 50 pounds were used. We do 
not know what forms of organic matter were used to 
give the 23 pounds of nitrogen from that source, and 
it does not make so much difference since we are 
sure of the others. You will see that the second fer¬ 
tilizer contains no nitrate of soda. Probably it has 
nothing but tankage or fish for its nitrogen. As we 
would expect, a good grass mixture contains nitrate 
of soda—this one having 114 pounds or 700 pounds of 
nitrate. We shall see when we come to look up the 
phosphoric acid and potash in this that the fertilizer 
is a mixture of nitrate, ground bone and muriate. 11 
is easy to see the advantage of knowing these things 
—we may take this up again next week and ask why 
it is an advantage to have different forms of organic 
nitrogen. 
SHEEP IN ARGENTINA.—Fig 66 reproduced from 
Bulletin 48, Bureau of Animal Industry, shows a fine 
Hampshire Down ram, a typical specimen of the pure¬ 
bred stock being used to improve the flocks of Ar¬ 
gentina, where the sheep business suffered very much 
during 1902, on account of low prices of wool and 
mutton. This excellent breed is not so well known 
in the United States as some others. As compared 
with Southdown and Shropshire they are usually 
larger and heavier, but lacking in symmetry. The 
fleece is long and coarse. Face and legs are nearly 
black; head large, back straight and broad, making 
heavy cuts of mutton. The lambs make a very rapid 
growth, proving valuable for the early city market. 
OPPOSED TO SUBSOILING.—I have had a good deal 
of experience subsoiling, and would advise not to do it 
if the soil is thin on clay subsoil, It will do more harm 
than good. I never understood the reasons fully, but it 
seemed to make the soil poorer or at leat the crops did 
not do so well; locality, western New York, near Canan¬ 
daigua. I would underdrain instead. My neighbor said 
it interfered with the natural water courses and “per¬ 
manently” injured the soil. I would not say permanently, 
but several years elapsed before natural conditions pre¬ 
vailed again. I would not have it done on any terms; 
besides it is a tedious job to have extra team and man 
making the expense of plowing double. So I advise, if 
you are determined to subsoil do only a little and watch 
the results. My preference is to keep the surface for 
about six inches rich and mellow. Plow a little deeper 
about once in three times and never subsoil. h. 
Bucks Co., Pa. 
