THE 
HORTICULTURAL REGISTER, 
February 1st, 1S35. 
Article I.—ON CHEMISTRY, 
AS CONNECTED WITH THE DEVELOPEMENT AND GROWTH OF PLANTS 
BY THE AUTHOR OF THE DOMESTIC GARDENER’S MANUAL. 
(Seventh Article.) 
Two Subjects of importance remain to be considered,— namely the 
nature and operation of Manuring Substances , and the Preparation 
of Vegetable food. 
Of Manures, much has been written, far more than has been ap¬ 
plied, or understood. The term is very comprehensive : it includes 
every species of refuse matter that is produced in the farm yard and 
house, and the vegetable remain^ of the garden. I do not intend to 
particularise: my entire paper might be devoted, solely, to the ar¬ 
rangement of a list; and they who are curious in such things, are 
referred to the 6th Agricultural Lecture of Sir Humphrey Davy, or 
to the Encyclopaedia of Gardening, article manures. It will suffice 
to state here, that every substance, which is decomposable into oxy¬ 
gen, hydrogen ; with occasionally, azotic gases; and into carbonaceous 
black matter, or its compounds with oxygen and hydrogen, is, pro¬ 
perly speaking, a manure, and may be resolved into vegetable ali¬ 
ment. The manuring substances of the dunghill, first claim atten¬ 
tion ; they have from the remotest time, been considered the very 
life of the farm and the garden ; but much difference of opinion has 
existed concerning the state in which they should be applied to the 
land. Some, and indeed the greater number of practical men, have 
strenuously argued for the utility of letting the mass be reduced to 
the soft, adhesive condition of spit-dung : others, the Chemists par¬ 
ticularly, have denounced the system of protracted fermentation, as 
wasteful and injurious ; they have asserted the decomposition ought 
to be slowly effected in the soil, not in the heap ; that—“it is better 
there should be no fermentation at all before the manure is used, 
VOL. IV. NO. 44. 
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