ANIMAL MANURES. 
gent and offensive gases; for then they are rich 
not only in sulphur, phosphorus, and nitrogen, 
but also in chlorine, soda, potash, lime, and mag- 
nesia; and therefore are eminently fitted to re- 
| store the fertility of exhausted soils, or to qualify 
land for producing wheat, barley, beans and other 
albuminous crops. The specific excrementitious 
manure of cows, sheep, horses, and other animals, 
will be noticed in the articles Excremenr and 
URINE. 
The flesh and intestines of quadrupeds are 
sometimes used as manures; and as they under- 
go a rapid and very wasteful and offensive de- 
composition when exposed to the open air, they 
ought when fresh to be either covered with the 
soil, or mixed up with earthy substances into a 
compost. The refuse of shambles is always a 
powerful manure, and ought when fresh to be 
mixed up with earthy matter for a compost; and 
the carcasses of domestic animals, which die from 
accident or disease, ought, immediately after 
death, to be laid in shallow pits, covered with 
earth containing a mixture of quicklime, allowed 
to dissolve in that position, and afterwards treat- 
ed with the surrounding soil as acompost. Blub- 
ber may be very beneficially employed as a manure, 
and ought always to be formed into a compost 
with earthy matter. The garbage of sea-fish is 
an efficient manure for every kind of crop, and 
may be obtained in considerable quantity in fish- 
ing villages where fish are smoked or salted. 
Herrings, in some years of great plenty, have— 
wickedly, as we think—hbeen fished in such enor- 
mous quantities as to be sold profusely in cart- 
loads to farmers as manure. Fresh-water fish 
are sometimes obtained in sufficient quantity, in 
the shallows of fenny countries, to be employed 
as manure; and, though of very questionable pro- 
priety, they have confessedly a very high manu- 
rial power. Sprats for manure, are purchased in 
thousands of bushels at a time by the farmers of 
Essex and Suffolk, and are carried in waggons 
to districts ten or fifteen miles distant from the 
coast; and when mixed with earth, allowed to 
dissolve, and used as a compost, they operate 
with great power, especially upon turnips, yet 
expend nearly all their force upon a single crop. 
Woollen rags, chopped small, and strewed along 
the drills in the proportion of 3 or 4 cwt. to an 
acre, are an excellent manure for potatoes, but 
are employed chiefly for hops; and they are 
known to be used by English farmers to the ag- 
gregate amount of 20,000 tons a-year, and ob- 
tained at so high a price as five guineas per ton. 
Various other animal substances,—the refuse of 
manufactories in which wool, skin, feathers, and 
hair are employed,—such substances as the refuse 
of the currier and the offal of the gluemaker— 
are used in the same manner, or upon the same 
principle, as woollen rags. Bones are so efficient, 
well-known, and generally used a manure, as to 
demand lengthened notice in an article of their 
own. See Bonus. Horn is a substance of similar 
ANIMAL POWER. 189 
properties to bones, and equally efficient as a 
manure; but it can be obtained in only very 
limited quantity, and, on that account, is of in- 
ferior importance. Hair and feathers are also 
similar in chemical composition to bones; but, for 
the same reason as horn, they never can make a 
prominent figure among manures. The remains 
of the silk-worm are employed by the inhabitants 
of silk-producing countries, as manure for reviy- 
ing the mulberry tree and stimulating some other 
plants. The pulverized shells of oysters, mussels, 
and other shell-fish, is used as manure for tur- 
nips; but it possesses only about half the manu- 
rial power of bones; and is frequently employed 
by nefarious venders as a means of adulterating 
bone-dust. The common shells of the shores of 
Great Britain, such as those of cockles, whelks, 
and mussels, are found in large quantities upon 
some rocky districts of coast, and upon shallow 
beaches which are swept by powerful tidal cur- 
rents; and, when applied in the proportion of 
sixteen bushels per acre, they act as a very suit- 
able manure for turnips. All animal substances 
whatever, no matter how completely of the nature 
of waste or offal, or how apparently unlike in na- 
ture to the more common manures, act upon the 
soil as fertilizers, and may be beneficially em- 
ployed either singly or in composts. The prin- 
cipal in use, additional to those which we have 
named, are various kinds of oils and oil-cakes, 
animalized black, animalized sea-weed, cockchaf- 
ers, dried muscular flesh, blood in various con- 
ditions, dregs of bone glue, and cow-hair flock.— 
Paper of Dr. Sprengel in Journal R. Agr. Society. 
—Boussingault’s Rural Economy. Johnson on Fer- 
telizers— Dr. Dana's Muck Manual.—Armstrong’s 
Treatise on Agriculture.—Inebig’s Organie Chem- 
wstry.—Johnston’s Lectures on Agr. Chemistry — 
Low’s Practical Agriculture—Sproule’s Treatise on 
Agriculture—Stephen’s Book of the Farm. 
ANIMAL OAT. See Oars, 
ANIMAL POISONS. See Poisons. ; 
ANIMAL POWER. The exertion of the 
strength of animals to produce motion or physi- 
cal change. ‘The principal varieties of this upon 
a farm are the several kinds of horse labour, in 
moving implements, vehicles, and machinery. 
Animal power has been principally or wholly su- 
perseded by mechanical power, chiefly that of the 
steam-engine, on railways and in multitudinous 
manufactories; it has also been partially super- 
seded by mechanical power on the farmery of 
large farms; and it has, of late years, been fre- 
quently threatened by theorists with being su- 
perseded by mechanical power in almost every 
department of agricultural labour. But animal 
power may easily be shown to possess important 
adaptations to farm labour, which mechanical 
power does not possess, to be free from some se- 
rious objections with which the use of mechanical 
power is encumbered, and, in particular, for all 
the ordinary purposes of draught upon farms or 
of traffic upon common roads, to be at once sim- 
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