trated fertilizers that we can put on our lands, year after year, and keep them up, there are large quantities of land in this State which can be cultivated to advantage; and it will give us a chance to improve our agriculture, and improve our agricultural resources. I must confess that I am rather sceptical in regard to whether you can, by putting sixteen bushels of a fertilizer upon an acre, take off fifty bushels of corn and two tons and a half of fodder. I say, I am rather sceptical in regard to it; but I do not wish to express the opinion that it cannot be done, because I am aware that Nature is able to do many mysterious things. We frequently say that water will only run down hill; and yet, when we come to examine the matter, we find that it cannot run down hill until Nature makes it first go up. It all has to go up first, and it is done very silently. I am not certain that we cannot produce fifty bushels of corn and two tons and a half of fodder with sixteen bushels of fertilizer; but it will be a wonderful thing if we can. There is one thing which leads me to think You all know that Nature, when left to herfertilize the land. For example, we know very well that barren knolls, if left to themselves, will throw up little shrubs, which will become trees in the course of twenty-five or thirty years, and furnish perhaps more than one hundred tons of solid material; and yet, when that material is taken away, the land is left in better condition than it was when the growth of the wood first commenced. This shows that Nature has the power of replenishing herself in some way. But whether this can be carried out in our annual crops, is what I desire to know. I am trying the experiment myself; and, if I live long enough, I shall know from my own experiments whether this can be done or not. I rose simply to make this inquiry, hoping that there may be individuals present who have tried the experiments.

this is possible. self, is able to

Mr. PHILBRICK of Newton Centre. I have been very much interested in the lecture which has just been read. It touches a point of vital importance to every farmer. We all of us depend upon manure. We cannot get enough of it, and we want to know how to obtain a supply. We have been told, that, in China and other foreign countries, they utilize night-soil, and do it profitably. I wish I could say that the experiments of farmers in this neighborhood have

proved that they can do it profitably here. As many of you know, I am a farmer myself; and I have for the last eight or ten years used considerable night-soil. I have labored under a great deal of difficulty in getting good material. The habits of our people are very different from those of the people of China, or even of Paris. We use a great deal of water here. They do not consider it necessary to wash their faces every morning. In China they get along with very little water. Our people use a great deal of water; and where does it go? They have pipes leading from their washbowls and bath-tubs and the kitchen-sink; and this water all empties itself into the cesspool, and there it is mixed with the washings of the water-closet. Consequently, instead of getting what the lecturer has told us in night-soil, we get a certain quantity of night-soil and a certain quantity of urine mingled with an uncertain quantity of water; and we have to pay for the water, which we do not want. There is one of the great difficulties. We have so much water mixed with it, and there is so much labor involved in the application of night-soil, that it does not pay, unless we can have a very good article, and mix it with absorbents that do not cost any thing. We haul a great deal of horse-manure from the stables, which in summer time is very dry, and mix the night-soil with that, and find our account in it. But we do not find any profit in night-soil as we get it. If the habits of our people could be so changed that they could do without water, we might be able to use night-soil with profit; or if they would keep the water they use separate from the products of their water-closets, so that the night-soil would be a pure article, it might pay us to use it: but we all know that the tendency is to use more and more water. All our towns and cities are increasing their water-supplies. It comes into the house of every man who can afford it, and into the houses of a great many who cannot afford it; and, after they have used it, the water must go somewhere. They do not not take pains to keep it from the water-closet.

This is, you see, a most serious problem, and has attracted the attention of the ablest engineers in this neighborhood. It is not very long since the city of Boston voted to expend many millions to improve their drainage system. They found the nuisance which has been alluded to, and it has be

come very troublesome. The city flats are exposed to the sun at low tide; and they are a great nuisance, owing to the deposits of the sewers upon them; and the city has been obliged to provide another drain, which is to carry all the collected sewage of Boston down to Moon Island, six miles below the wharves, at the south side of the harbor, where it is to be discharged into deep water, at great expense. It will be years before this new system can be fully carried out; but, when it is, there will be no trouble. This may seem an enormous waste, and undoubtedly it is; but the question is, whether, with the habits of our people, we can do any better. Can we devise any plan by which this waste can be avoided? The engineers who have had this matter in charge do not think it can be done. They do not think we can produce such a change in the habits of our people, that this refuse matter can be made available, and put into practicable shape. There is a great deal of valuable material in our sewers; but it is so diluted with water, that the expense of moving it to the country to use it for the purpose of irrigation would be very large, and it is thought that that plan would not be practicable. A commission was recently appointed in Boston to investigate this subject, consisting of two engineers, both very able men; and they went into the matter very deeply, and took pains to investigate the disposition that is made of sewage in England, France, Belgium, and other countries. They found, that, in a large majority of cases where irrigation with sewage had been attempted, it was not profitable; that the money expended did not reap any interest; that the farms were improved, but they were improved at an expense that was not warranted by the result. There are some exceptions to this, however, as was mentioned in the lecture. The neighborhood of Edinburgh has been benefited in a money point of view; but the effect there is bad. There are one or two cases where the land is so situated as to receive the contents of the cesspools without pumping, so that the expense of raising this vast bulk of water is not required; and, in these cases, the use of this material for irrigation has proved profitable. The only practicable way of getting at the trouble seems to be to carry the sewage out a sufficient distance by a pipe, where it will not be any great trouble.

The matter of the use of artificial fertilizers has been

alluded to. I have a few words to say upon that. I cultivate a few acres of meadow-land, where I raise early potatoes for the market. I try to get them early; and I have found them a very profitable crop. I have tried fertilizers on that drained meadow, which is rather peaty, with very great success. Three years ago I manured the land with horse-manure, ten or twelve cords to the acre; and I got a very good crop of potatoes, I should think two hundred and fifty or three hundred bushels to the acre; but, before I could dig them, the rot struck them, so that I did not dig them all.

I planted the same land the next year with potatoes again, and there was fertility enough in the land to carry the crop without any additional manure. I think we dug about two hundred and fifty bushels to the acre without any manure applied. That was last year. This year I planted the same land again with potatoes. I did not dare to trust it without any manure; and, as I was short of horse-manure, I applied the Stockbridge Fertilizer by spreading it on the land, and harrowing it in; and I got very nearly as good a crop as I did last year, and a very good quality of potatoes. My potatoes came off so early, that I concluded to plant cabbages. I got the potatoes off about the 15th of July, and immediately bought the Stockbridge Fertilizer for Cabbage for one acre; and on that land I set late cabbages. I thought I was going to have a pretty good crop of cabbage; but - for some reason which I cannot explain, but which I hope will be explained by some scientific man- the well-known disease, club-foot, struck the field, and I had no cabbages fit to carry to market. I did not attribute it to the fertilizer, for I think it is a good thing; and I shall apply it again.

Mr. MURRAY of Waltham: About the year 1836 or 1837 a company was formed for the purpose of converting the sewage of New York into poudrette. I read the circulars that they sent out all over the country; and, according to their statements, the results from the use of this poudrette were perfectly enormous. I was fool enough to believe all I read; and I sent to the company, and bought a hundred barrels. It was brought to Boston in a packet-ship; and I sent teams in to bring it out to Waltham. I tried that poudrette upon various crops, both of the farm and garden, and

watched the result carefully. I am sorry to say, I put nothing but sand on the land: it was perfectly useless in every sense of the word. I compared it with the night-soil that I bought from the man who cleans the vaults in Boston; and I tried it as a top-dressing on grass and with hoed crops. I had three barrels left over; and, when the spring of the following year came, I told the men to haul it out, and throw it, anywhere to get it out of the way: it was perfectly useless. They rolled the barrels out; and I told them to knock their heads in, and put the material anywhere in the road. Afterwards I wrote a short article for "The Ploughman," and condemned the poudrette in such a way, that it set everybody laughing. The article got into the hands of the manufacturers in New York; and they threatened to sue me. Well, I didn't like to be sued: so I took the letter in to my friend Charles A. Welch, of the firm of Sohier and Welch. Mr. Welch read the letter, laughed, and said, "Keep yourself perfectly easy: they will never trouble you; they are trying to frighten you." Well, as Mr. Welch said, they never did trouble me; and I have continued to advise everybody to let it alone as a thing of no value whatever.

But I have used the common night-soil brought from the city, which I have prepared with great care. I have invariably mixed it with either loam or muck, well pulverized, and exposed to the atmosphere for one or two years before I used it as an absorbent for night-soil. I prepared a basin' for the night-soil, and threw this in, and threw a good coating of plaster over it; then I turned it over twice before I tried its temperature. I usually put stakes into the pile in various places to find when it was fermented; and whenever I found, by placing a thermometer in the pile, that the temperature rose over seventy-five degrees, Fahrenheit, I immediately spread out the pile, and added more of the raw material, such as muck and peat, to prevent the escape of the gases. At the same time, I always threw quite a large quantity of plaster over the pile to prevent any escape of the ammonia. I have had great success in using night-soil prepared in that way upon various crops; and I deem it one of the most valuable manures we have: but I do not approve of using it in a raw state; I want to have it always carefully fermented before I use it.