—_ 
482 
animal and vegetable matters, destructible by 
fire, 39 of impalpable carbonate of lime, 85 of 
silica, 20 of alumina, 5 of oxide of iron, 4 of solu- 
ble matter, principally vegetable extract, with 
sulphate of lime, and 13 of moisture or loss. 
The two soils—whose most important chemical 
differences were the respective deficiency and 
excess of carbonate of lime, and the lesser or 
greater proportion of alumina—differed also in 
the important mechanical property of respective 
fineness and coarseness of their particles—The 
report of the Doncaster Association on bone- 
manure corroborates, for the most part, the 
general principle of Mr. Sinclair, and, at the 
same time, exhibits it in more detailed appli- 
cation. “Upon very thin sandy land,” says 
that report, “the value of bone-manure is not 
to be estimated ; it is not only found to bene- 
fit the particular crop to which it is applied, 
but extends through the whole course of crops; 
and even in the succeeding courses, its effects 
are visible in the improved quality of the land, 
and the efficiency of a smaller quantity than 
would at first have insured a crop. Upon much 
of the high land about Babworth, which is a 
light sandy soil, the crops under ordinary farm 
management were comparatively unproductive ; 
but since the introduction of bones, after having 
been dressed with several fallows with 60 or 70 
bushels per acre, they have-not only become pro- 
ductive, but so much improved in quality as to 
return an equal crop with a much lighter dress- 
ing of manure or bones throughout the next 
course.” On the wolds of Yorkshire and Lincoln- 
shire, “before bones were generally used with 
turnip seed, many thousand acres were annually 
sown for that crop without any manure whatever, 
from the impossibility of getting-fold-manure for 
more than one-third or fourth of their fallows. 
The turnips upon such unmanured land were 
consequently very indifferent; and the benefit of 
sheep-feeding upon their tops—for of bottoms 
they seldom had any—was very trifling. Since 
the use of bones has, however, become general, 
the turnip crop has been in many instances ten- 
fold, and in few less than four or fivefold its for- 
mer bulk. All the succeeding crops of grain and 
seeds have been amazingly increased; and, upon 
the four or five shift system, there is no doubt 
the land will go on progressively improving, re- 
quiring a less quantity of bones annually, from 
its increased fertility and power.” Upon even 
the calcareous soils of the Yorkshire wolds, land 
which formerly produced only from 8 to 10 tons 
of poor turnips per acre from farm-yard manure, 
now produces heavy crops of good turnips from 
16 bushels per acre of bones. On well-drained 
and dry peat soils, a manuring with from 15 to 
20 bushels per acre of bone-dust, applied in the 
drill method, has a far more powerfully fertilizing 
effect than any ordinary dressing of stable dung, 
or than even an application of pigeons’ dung and 
lime. Gravelly soils ofa light and dry character are 
BONE-MANURE. 
much benefited by bone-manure; but stiff clayey 
gravels, especially heavy water-logged yellow 
clays with admixtures of stones and grit, receive 
no benefit whatever from this manure, no matter 
in what manner it is applied. All clays and 
heavy loams, with such occasional exceptions as 
may be accounted for mainly on the influence of 
unusually dry seasons, are quite beyond the reach 
of any material fertilization from bones. Yet a 
farmer near Nantwich in Cheshire states, in the 
New Farmer’s Magazine, “that he occupies a 
farm, the soil of which is a clay loam, scarcely 12 
inches deep, the subsoil a grey sand mixed with 
coarse clay, which the farmers call rammel, on a 
bed of good clay marl; and that two years ago, 
he covered the field with bone-manure, previous 
to which the grass was so sour as not to be worth 
ten shillings per acre, but it is now full of most 
excellent herbage, consisting of white clover and 
trefoil ;” and he adds, “that, in another of his 
fields with a clay soil, a small portion of it was 
manured 32 years ago, by a former tenant, with 
bones, and that, although it has been 20 years in 
tillage, yet that part still shows a superiority over 
the rest.” 
The aggregate opinions of farmers as to the 
length of time during which bone-manure operates 
on the soil may be gathered from the prevailing 
rates of allowance for it in the valuations of farms. | 
In some places an allowance of six years is made 
for bone-manure on pasture, of four years on grass 
lands successively mown, and of four years on 
arable land; in other places, of ten years on pas- 
ture, six years on mown grass lands, and four or 
six years on arable lands; and in other places, a 
still larger allowance. When one white crop has 
been taken after the application of bone-manure, | 
two-thirds of the prime cost and of the expenses 
are allowed ; after two white crops are taken, one- 
third is allowed; and after three are taken, no 
allowance is made. But bone-dust is adjudged 
less durable than merely crushed bones, is valued 
at one tillage less than the latter, and usually 
ranks in valuation with farm-yard manure, or is 
regarded as coextensive with a four years’ rota- 
tion. The actual power of bone-manure upon the 
soil, however, is in many instances of vastly longer 
duration than these rates of allowance would 
seem to indicate. One field, noticed in the Don- 
caster report, was manured in one part with bones 
and in another part with farm-yard dung; and 
the boned part was visibly superior to the other 
during the long period of 15 or 16 years. Ano- 
ther instance, noticed in that report, is precisely 
similar to the preceding, but exhibits visible im- 
provement from the bones during even a much 
longer period. Another and still more remark- 
able instance, reported in the Quarterly Journal of 
Agriculture of March 1832, exhibited the reclama- 
tion of almost wasteland by means of bone-manure 
about 25 years before the close of last century, 
and the continuance of visible good effects from 
the bones down to the time at which the report | 
