1852. 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
183 
Manufacture of Manure. 
Last April I took it into my head that I would like to 
keep a cow and pigs; but then living right in the center 
of a city of 33,000 inhabitants, I had no place to keep 
them, saving a woodshed of ten feet square and one story 
high. Well I will tell you what I did. I dug, or (as 
Solomon built the temple,) caused to he dug, a cellar 
ten feet square, and seven feet deep under my woodshed. 
I took two planks, say eight inches wide each, ten feet 
long, and laid them up edgewise one upon the other, at 
the bottom of one side of my cellar—and eight inches 
from the side, or standing bank. This space I filled with 
paving stones of various sizes, then with a mixture of two 
parts sand and one of cement, thin enough to run into 
all the interstics, I filled in until it became full to the top 
of the stones; whilst this cement was setting, I would 
serve another side the same, and so on all around the 
sides. In this manner I made the sides of my cellar 
seven feet high. Then I paved the bottom and filled be¬ 
tween the stones with cement as above, so that my cellar 
is water tight. 
It took 9 casks of cement, at $1.50per cask,.... $16 20 
2 loads of sand,. 1 25 
$17 45 
Teaming of stone picked from my own land / ... 3 00 
Labor of an Irishman, six days,. 5 00 
Superintendency by myself, do.,.$25 45 
I raised my shed one story for a hay loft, and floored 
the bottom. Now I have a good pig pen and cow barn. 
I have ample cellar room under my dwelling, main and 
S. front, say 20 by 70 feet, dry and good for wood, which 
I have cut in the street, and pitched into a cellar window. 
But manure , that is the suject. With one pig and 
with the help of a cow during nights, from April to No¬ 
vember, by throwing in scrapings from woodshed, and 
what litter and dirt would naturally accumulate about 
the house and yard, to do which I paid out $1.50 only, 
I made three and a half cords of manure, for which I 
was offered $4.50 per cord by several individuals; it was 
considered better than stable manure. The cellar being 
water tight, I found it indispensably necessary to throw 
in as much dirt as I did, for the hog to work upon, other¬ 
wise I should have lost him in the mire. 
Therefore, if any one will make such a cellar, or pig¬ 
sty as I have, I do not see how he can avoid making, say 
seven cords of manure, from one cow and one pig, in the 
course of a year. The cow of course stands over the 
cellar by which means the liquid as well as the solid ma¬ 
nure is saved. 
If you let your cellar become so wet as to get the pig 
mired, and he die, then of course you do not get your 
seven cords of manure, but if you will throw him meadow 
mud, loam, or chip manure enough to keep him tolera¬ 
bly dry you will get your amount. This also would be 
a good receptacle for soap suds and sink water, but if 
you put these in, you will have something to do to keep 
it dry. I am afraid your heap would necessarily increase 
to ten cords. 
Some of your readers, (should you deem fit to pub¬ 
lish this) will say, verily, this is book-farming with a 
vengeance, but it is the result of actual experiment. Wa¬ 
ter cisterns, vaults to privies, and especially barn cellars, 
may be built in the way above described, cheaply, per¬ 
manently, and good. But short communications, I like 
to have forgotten. Yours truly, George Mansfield. 
Lowell , Mass., Feb. 1852. 
Theory and Practice. 
Many cultivators insist that the most vigorous young 
grafted trees are produced by selecting and inserting the 
most vigorous shoots; that straight, upright shoots, will 
make straight trees; and side-ascending shoots will make 
bow-shaped trees; and that grafts taken from very old 
trees will not give us such durable specimens as those 
taken from such as are young. This appears to be theo¬ 
ry, exclusively, and it is repeated by various writers with 
all the confidence afforded by long trial. 
Now, for one or two items of practice. Some years 
ago, we tried a large number of experiments, by cutting, 
first, a bundle of grafts from very vigorous, straight, and 
upright shoots, on a bearing apple tree; and secondly, a 
bundle from the side shoots, all of which were curved or 
crooked. The grafts were inserted at the ground, into 
contiguous rows of stocks. For five years, not the 
slightest difference in growth could be observed. Again 
—a writer in the Gardener’s Chronicle informs us that in 
1824, owing to a large removal of old trees, he took grafts 
from more than four hundred, which were in “a state of 
complete decripitude,” and putting them on healthy 
young stocks, they have all grown with remarkable vigor. 
“ These trees, from twenty to twenty-six years old, and 
of which many had attained the height of‘more than 
thirty-six feet, all bore fruit in prodigious quantity, and 
were free from original disease, when they fell under the 
axe.” ^ 
The truth is, the opinions referred to above, should not 
be dignified with the term “ theory;” they are mere hy¬ 
pothesis—notion. Theory teaches the reverse—that is, 
that the eyes or buds which annually form, and thus con¬ 
tinually produce new individuals, will multiply and grow 
perpetually, so long as they are not impeded or obstructed 
by external causes; which causes may be in the shape of 
bad soils, ungenial climates, bad cultivation, or from be¬ 
ing located on very old and stunted trees which cannot 
furnish the necessary nourishment. 
Analysis of the Strawberry. 
B. Kirtland gives the following analysis in the Fami¬ 
ly Visitor, showing a large amount of potash in propor¬ 
tion to other constituents, much silica, and more magne¬ 
sia and common salt, than are usually found in other 
fruits. One hundred and sixteen grains of the ashes were 
taken, prepared from the leaves and stalks immediately 
after they had borne a moderate crop of truit. 
Silica,. 6.117 grains. 
Charcoal and sand,. 3.101 do 
Perphosphate of iron|^. 1.515 do 
Perphosphate of lime,. 26.519 do 
Magnesia,. 8.908 do 
Sulphuric acid,. 1.469 do 
Phosphoric acid,. 6.970 do 
Chlorine,.708 do 
Potash,. 33.154 do 
Soda,. 2.790 do 
Carbonic acid,. 23.008 do 
Organic matter and loss,. 1.739 do 
116.000 do 
