THE CULTIVATOR. 
daily, to hare an extraordinary propensity to chew 
leather, yet we never could discover that such animals 
possessed any idiosyncracy, but merely a depraved 
appetite. Some horses have a strange propensity to 
gnaw wood whenever they can lay their teeth upon it, 
without any particular object or reason. 
Drouth, Irrigation, and Liquid Manuring. 
The recent extraordinary drouth, which prevailed in 
a large portion of the country, very naturally leads to 
the inquiry for remedies to prevent the disasters usu¬ 
ally incident to such occurrences. When it is remem¬ 
bered that about 90 per cent of all growing crops, are, on 
an average, simply water, it will be no matter of sur¬ 
prise that vegetable growth should be either entirely 
suspended or else greatly retarded, and that in some in 
stances even the death of smaller crops should occur,when 
the supply of this very important element is entirely cut 
off. Not only is the supply withheld, but all the riches of 
the soil are as effectually locked up as'in a case of iron, 
for there is nothing to dissolve its fertilizing portions, 
and to convey them to the vessels of the plant. Dr. Hales 
found that during a dry season a bunch of green grass 
placed under a bell glass, perspired so rapidly as to 
cause in two minutes the condensed moisture to run 
down its sides. No wonder then, that meadows and 
pastures, which in order to flourish, must continue to 
throw off moisture thus rapidly, now that they can get 
nothing to supply the demand, should look as parched 
and suffering as a caravan of pilgrims in the center of 
an African desert. 
As for remedies, the first and great leading one, ap¬ 
plicable to all localities, is deepening the soil. This 
operates beneficially in two ways ; first, by permitting 
greater strength and vigor to the plants, so that they 
are not easily affected by changes from wet to dry ; and 
secondly, by making the reservoir of water—the sponge 
—which is to receive and retain the showers when they 
fall, deeper and consequently more capacious, so as not 
to be easily exhausted by seasons of drouth. A soil only 
four inches deep, with a hard-pan bottom, moist soon 
have its moisture dissipated when the sun’s rays pour 
down upon it day after day for a month, or when the 
plants which cover its surface are continually for that 
period pumping the water out of its shallow bed and 
sending it off through the leaves in the form of insensi¬ 
ble vapor into the air. But where the soil has been 
made deep by trench and subsoil plowing, a much longer 
time is required to exhaust this deeper reservoir of its 
water which the plants obtain by means of the long 
roots they send down, or by the capillary absorption of 
the upper portions from the moister stratum below, and 
which process a mellow soil always greatly facilitates. 
This remedy, of course, cannot be applied now , but is 
only a part of a general system of improved farming. 
Other remedies,- less universal in their application, 
but of great efficiency, where applicable, are irrigation, 
in its strict meaning, and liquid manuring. It is only 
in some particular localities that water is at command, 
which may be conveyed by channels upon the land; 
and to gardens and limited spaces, it may be applied 
to great advantage. European gardeners, in a much 
moister climate than ours, find extraordinary advan¬ 
tages from a constant application of water in large 
quantities, and there have been a few examples here 
where the admission of water between the rows of pota¬ 
toes, and other garden crops, has produced surprising 
results. 
Liquid manuring appears to be more particularly 
applicable to the neighborhood of towns and cities. Mil¬ 
lions of dollars are annually wasted by the large quan¬ 
tities of enriching substances which are annually carried 
off and wasted in sewers. It has been computed that 
the city of London affords enough in this way to impart 
the highest degree of fertilty to three hundred thousand 
acres of land ; and at the same rate of calculation New 
York would fertilize nearly a hundred thousand acres. 
The most surprising effects have lately been obtained 
from liquid manure in England, far exceeding those 
from any other enriching application. The reason is 
obvious—-the manure is hot only reduced to the finest 
degree of division, but the water which holds it carries 
it through all parts of a porous soil, and forms a more 
perfect intermixture than could be effected by any other 
means ; at the same time that the water performs an¬ 
other most important office', namely, supplying the 
growing plant with the amount of moisture which it so 
largely needs. 
There is no question that a highly diluted mixture 
of water and manure is the most perfect state in which 
to apply it; and in the case of sewage water, this mix¬ 
ture being already made, it can be applied in no 
other way. The question immediately arises, how is it 
to be conveyed to the land in the most economical man¬ 
ner ? This is the most difficult part of the process, for 
it is far cheaper to cart a ton of solid manure, than the 
same amount of fertilizing materials with ten times their 
weight of water. A very important dis' ission lately 
took place on this subject in a meeting of the Agricul¬ 
tural Society of England, in which it was declared by 
those versed in hydraulics, and who had experience in 
the conveyance of water in pipes, that so great was the 
facility with which it might be conveyed in pipes by 
the agency of steam power, when compared with cart¬ 
ing by horse labor, that the former could be effected at 
less than one-tenth the cost of the latter. One great 
difficulty, however, occurred from the fact that the li¬ 
quid manure was most wanted on the dryer hills, which 
are least accessible, the towns being usually lower than 
the surrounding country ; but this difficulty had been 
obviated by pumping up with a steam engine. Several 
distinguished and successful farmers had procured hy¬ 
draulic apparatus for this purpose; one had placed a 
hydrant for every 40 acres of his land, another for every 
11 acres, and another for every 3£ acres; from these 
hydrants a hose pipe issued, and was carried round in 
a circle, watering the whole surface regularly. Among 
these farmers was J. J. Mechi, well known by reputa¬ 
tion to the farmers in this country, who, from a large 
tank, drove the liquid manure through pipes over his 
whole farm, employing for this purpose the farm engine, 
erected for hip mill and thrashing machine. 
