1 Ocr., 1901. ] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 367 
put your nose to an open bottle of smelling salts. It made your eyes water, 
and, if you took a sudden, strong sniff at a freshly opened bottle, you were 
nearly choked. But you did not sniff up the solid salts—you only breathed 
the invisible gas from it. That strong smell comes from “ ammonia,” and it is 
that gas which gives the not very disagreeable and very healthy smell to stable 
manure. 
Now, if the smelling bottle were left always open the strength of the salts 
would soon be all gone into the air. So it is with the ammonia in the stable 
manure. If it is left exposed to the air the gas escapes, and thus one of the 
most valuable elements goes away invisibly, and other equally valuable ones 
depart in the liquid stream. What is then left is of much smaller value than 
when it left the stable. 
The business of the good farmer is to make these elements close prisoners, 
and keep them in the manure till he is ready to use it. How this is done will 
be the subject of a future lesson. 
Always bear in mind that the more stable manure you save, the less you 
will have to buy. No farmer can afford to buy what he can produce himself. 
And do not forget that, although farmyard manure does not contain all the 
nutritious elements required by plants in the proper proportions, yet it is of very 
eat value to the farmer, as it is generally the easiest manure to procure on a 
arm, and it has the very important quality of rendering light, porous soils more 
cohesive, thus enabling them to retain more moisture, whilst in the case of 
heavy, cold soils it acts beneficially by warming them, making them lighter, and 
thus more easy to cultivate and more suited to the production of good crops. 
In a future lesson I will tell you something about “ green-manuring.” 
Questions on Lesson 10. 
1. How can you tell when the land requires manure ? 
2. What fertilising elements does the soil contain ? 
3. How may these elements be replaced if they have been removed by 
constant cropping ? 
4, What must a farmer do before he uses artificial manures on his 
exhausted land ? 
5. What is meant by an analysis of a soil ? 
6. What are the advantages of obtaining an analysis ? 
7. What is a “ general’? manure ? 
8. How much water is there in 100 lb. of good farmyard manure ? 
9. Name in their order of value the manures produced by horses, cattle, 
sheep, and pigs ? 
10. What is meant by ‘“ decomposing” ? 
11. Which is the better manure—one that decomposes slowly or one 
which decomposes quickly ? 
12. How does evaporation affect stable manure ?P 
13. What effect has good stable manure on (1) light, porous soils, (2) 
heavy, stiff soils ? 
SECOND STAGE. 
Ist Lesson. 
Every boy and girl knows that if we put a seed, say a bean or a 
cabbage seed, into the ground it will grow if it is regularly watered, and 
if it is kept free from weeds. But sometimes you will notice that, although 
the seed sprouts and shows green leaves above the ground, it soon dies 
off. Now there must be a reason for it dying off. Let us try and find 
out that reason. The little seed, hidden from the light and supplied with 
moisture, begins to swell, and at last bursts and sends out two little 
shoots. One of these is called generally the root. When you learn more 
about it you will find that the root has another name. The other shoot, 
