56 
MANURES. 
which was superabundant in aninal mould. That 
thing is volatile alkali. The great mass of vegetable 
mould is always impregnated, but always slightly 
charged, with volatile alkali. There is not enough of 
the flesh and blood forming element in vegetables to 
hasten the decay of vegetable matter, or to convert 
them, after decay, into rich manure. Now here again 
not science, but practical common sense steps in, and 
did step in long ago, and as she taught mankind the 
necessity of adding soil or mould to the decaying ani¬ 
mal matter, so here, to enrich vegetable mould, she 
teaches that animal matter, or that which is its repre¬ 
sentative, alkaline salts , must be added to vegetable 
mould, to make it active. It is not the mould alone 
which plants want. We have seen all along how na¬ 
ture provides a certain amount of salts in her virgin 
mould; we, by cropping, exhaust these faster than 
the mould. We have tons of that, yet our fields are 
barren. They want, as has been explained, salts. 
And now, reader, having been brought by this course 
of reasoning to what the mould wants, consider what tons 
and tons of useless mould you have in your swamp muck 
and peat bogs, your hassocks, and your turfy meadows. 
All these, foot upon foot in depth as they lie, are truly 
vegetable mould, in a greater or less degree of decay, 
If you dig this up, and expose it to the air, that itself 
sets it to work, decay is hastened, volatile matters 
escape, yea, ammonia, the master spirit among manures, 
is secretly forming and at work, warming and sweet¬ 
ening the cold and sour muck. Without further pre¬ 
paration, practice confirms what theory teaches, that 
this process alone furnishes from these beds of vege¬ 
table mould a very good manure. It is already highly 
charged with all the salts which a plant wants. But 
experience, doubtless led by the light of the good re¬ 
sults of mixing mould with animal matter, to preserve 
its strength, has also reversed the practice, and taught 
the utility of adding to vegetable mould quickening 
salts ; that is, either the volatile alkali, by composting 
