57 
A PRIZE ESSAY, 
the mould with stable manure, or alkali in the shape 
of ashes, or potash, or soda ash, or lime, or a mixture 
of these. In fact, whatever substance can bj putre¬ 
faction give off volatile alkali, will and must and does 
convert vegetable mould, of itself dead and inactive, 
into a quick and fertilizing manure. 
If then, reader, you pause here a moment upon this 
fact, and then cast your view backward over the prin¬ 
ciples we have endeavored to impress on your memory, 
you . will perceive that there is not, among all the class¬ 
es and kinds * of manure which we have shown you, 
one which may not be added, or, as is the phrase, com¬ 
posted with peat, meadow mud, swamp muck, pond 
mud, or by whatever other name these great store¬ 
houses of vegetable matter are called. These are the 
true sources of abundant manure, to all whose stock 
of cattle, &e., is too small to give manure enough for 
the farmer’s use. It is the farmer’s business to make 
a choice, if he has any but Hobson’s, of what substance, 
or mixture of substances, he will use. We have shown 
him how small a portion of animal matter, one to ten 
of pure mould, will impregnate that substance. Tak¬ 
ing then a cord of this swamp muck, we shall find it 
contains, in round numbers, about one thousand pounds 
of real dry vegetable mould. So that the carcass of 
an animal weighing one hundred pounds, evenly and 
well mixed up with a cord of fresh-dug muck, will 
make a cord of manure, containing all the elements, 
and their amount too, of a cord of dung. 
But it is not from the carcasses of animals that the 
farmer expects to derive the quickening salts for his 
muck. This can be the source of that power only to 
the butchers, (what fat lands they all have !) or to the 
dwellers near the sea, where fish is plenty. A barrel 
of alewives, it is said, fertilizes a wagon load of loam. 
The carcass of a horse converts and fertilizes five or 
six cords of swamp muck. A cord of clear stable 
dung changes two cords of this same muck into a 
manure as rich and durable as stable manure itself 
