the wine produced. Our German emigrants are the people who will accomplish it. Our hills suitable for wine are of little value for other cultivation. Give a German 10 acres of this land, and if he has a wife and children, he will live in great luxury. He will never want for his two greatest of all luxuries, wine and sourcrout. His children however small, not only aid him in the cultivation, but his wife during the summer and fall does the greater part of the labor in the vineyard. The poor vinedressers in Germany are seldom so rich as to own a horse, and therefore over estimate their value. Yet greatly as they value the acquisition of a broken down pony in this country, it does not lessen their estimation of the great value of their wives in the vineyards. A very honest Dutch tenant of mine, who was so unfortunate as to lose his wife, observed to me, "he might just as well have lost his horse."

SOILING.

By R. L. PELL, Pelham Farm, Uister county..

For the last four years it has been my constant practice to soil, not only cows, but hogs, oxen and horses. My yards are large, enclosed by stone walls, and so arranged as to collect all the manure in the centre. There is a pump and trough convenient to it, and open sheds where the animals may lie and ruminate at pleasure.

Three times each day, at stated hours, green crops are cut and brought to them, such as clover and timothy grass, green oats, green corn stalks, green buckwheat in bloom, root tops, &c. Occasionally, by way of change, dry hay and straw are cut up and given to them, mixed with sufficient wheat bran to induce them to relish it. The stock are never permitted to waste anything; that left by the cows is given to the horses, as horses will eat after cows, and vice versa, cows after horses; but they will not eat after each other. The leavings of the horses is then fed to the hogs. The animals are enabled to consume their quantum in about thirty minutes, when they immediately lie down, rest, take on fat, and secrete milk. If pastured, they require many hours to obtain the requisite food, besides laboring diligently, which has a tendency to prevent the secretions either of fat or milk. They have but little time to ruminate; and when driven to and from pasture, run wildly about the field; are whipped, stoned and chased by dogs, which causes them to become feverish, and as a result contract their milk vessels.

Salt should always be within reach of the animals in the yard, as it is indispensable to keep the organs of digestion active, increase the milk and growth of fat, besides much improving the quality of the flesh.

I have found, by actual experiment, that cows, when fed in the yard at regular periods, with a change of food, not allowing them

at any time to be over fed, and supplied at all times with an abundance of water, have doubled their milk; that is to say, the same cows that were one year depastured gave, when confined, twice the quantity of milk, and of a much richer quality. When depastured, I did not obtain a particle of manure; it was dropped upon the soil, certainly, but with very little advantage to it, nearly all the volatile gases were immediately given to the atmosphere, and many of its other valuable properties were withdrawn from it by flies; so that the soil received but little benefit. One of the principal and most valuable ingredients in manure is ammonia, which is converted to a volatile substance in farm-yard manure, called nitrogen, and is, of all others, the fertilizer, that must, if possible, be saved, as neither seeds nor plants can be obtained without it. The manure dropped in the fields is deprived immediately of this indispensable gas. The potash and soda also being easily dissolved by water, and likewise lost, practically lost, by being deposited in excess. In the barnyard these valuable substances may be preserved by means of charcoal dust, which absorbs the ammonia as it rises to escape, and the potash as it dissolves, by absorption, and holds them until saturated with rain, when the gases are again disseminated in the heap, and the charcoal takes in moisture. This manure may then be placed on fields in large or small quantities, as required, and in such a manner as to produce the most advantage. An opportunity is afforded, likewise, of making any description of manure needed. If highly nitrogenized substances are required for crops, allow the hogs to run in the barn-yard, and feed them corn; it contains valuable nutricious elements, suitable not only to the growth of plants, but the animals themselves, being composed of nitrogen, potash, carbon, soda, lime, and other necessary chemicals, all of which, after having formed the bones, flesh, fat, skin, hair and muscles of the animal, are again returned to the manure heap in lesser quantities. The value of the manure may be farther increased by feeding oats, rye, peas, buckwheat, cut straw, &c.

One reason that the excrement of the horse is so much richer and more valuable than that of the cow is, that the horse is fed on farinaceous matter, corn, oats, &c., which the cow is not; and so likewise is that of man, because he partakes of a great variety of food, both animal and vegetable. My barn-yard has yielded me a large amount of manure per annum, since I commenced soiling my stock; whereas, before, I did not obtain a single load, except in winter. The plan I adopt is, to cast daily all the refuse of the farm into the yard; such as weeds, muck, leaves, refuse straw, sods from the

hedge rows, pond mud, refuse vegetables, and numerous other substances that might be named. The hogs turn them over and incorporate them one with another, and the stock trample down and form them into a solid mass; charcoal dust is once a week spread over the whole, which retains and preserves all the gases that would otherwise escape; every three months it is drawn out, placed in a square heap and mixed with plaster, ashes, salt, muck, and guano; the whole is then covered with charcoal dust to the depth of six inches, and left until fall, when it is used upon the fields most requiring it; spread on broad cast, and plowed under the earth, and the crops make use of the gases as nature provides, and all care

ceases

Another most important advantage accrues to the soiler, viz: a piece of land that would support five cows, depastured one week, would amply furnish the same with an abundant supply of food one month, if cut and carried to them. The piece depastured would likewise be almost destroyed by poaching in wet weather; trampling, sleeping upon, and injuring the herbage by close eating. Horses do much more damage than cows, as they eat much closer, and frequently pull the grass out by the roots.

When cattle are stall-fed, or soiled in the yard, the nitrogen of the manure may be preserved by artificial means. It is an ingredient absolutely indispensable to the growth of plants. By analysis it has been found in every part of the growing plant; the roots, stems leaves, &c., contain it, showing that without it plants cannot be grown. How important then it is, that so valuable a substance should be preserved. I have grown plants in pure charcoal dust, by watering them with rain water; the rain water yielded them ammonia, and consequently nitrogen as one of its elements. I found with spring water, I could not grow them after a certain period at all in charcoal dust; but with rain water most successfully. Although the air must contain a vast quantity of nitrogen, I am confident the plants I grew, did not obtain the quantity they required from that source; if they had, the spring water would have answered them as well as the rain water; they must have obtained it through the medium of ammonia, contained in the rain water. This is a singular fact, and goes to show that although a generation of more than one thousand millions of the children of Adam, and 20,000 millions of animals cease to exist, and the nitrogen which they contain, is yielded in part to the heaven every thirty years, still plants cannot elaborate it in their system, except through the medium of the roots.

The hydrogen unites with the nitrogen, produced, not only by dead animals, but the excrement and urine of all animals while living, as well as other putrescent matter; thus forming ammonia, which combines with carbonic acid gas, and descends with every shower to the earth's surface, in a soluble form, easily taken up by the roots, and distributed throughout the field. Davy calculates, that a pint of rain water contains only a quarter of a grain of ammonia, that a field of forty thousand square feet, must receive yearly, upwards of eighty pounds of ammonia, or sixty-five pounds of nitrogen; for it is ascertained that the annual fall of rain water in England, on this extent of surface, is at least 2,500,000 pounds. This is much more nitrogen than is contained in the form of vegetable albumen and gluten in 2,800 lbs. of hay, or 20,000 lbs. of beet root, which would be the yearly produce of such a field; but it is less than the straw, roots, and grain of corn, which might grow on the same surface, would contain; therefore, the farmer must supply the deficiency of nitrogen by using manures containing ammonia.

Animal manure is chiefly valuable for the ammonia which it produces. Without it, fodder for animals, or vegetables and grain for man, cannot be grown. Manure without stint with nitrogenized substances, and the wheat grown will yield 18 per cent of gluten, will weigh 64 lbs. and produce 50 bushels to the acre. Such has been the experiment I tried upon a wheat field, when the adjoining field, treated in the usual manner, yielded me wheat weighing 56 pounds, and 15 bushels to the acre, and probably not more than five per cent of gluten. I placed some of the same nitrogenized composition upon a barren piece of sandy land, which I had never seen covered with verdure of any description, and in a very short period of time, it was clothed with a dense dark green grass, which tillered well. White clover afterwards came in, which, when it dies, will afford food for a succession of plants; and the piece may be considered as reclaimed.

All lands require humus or decayed vegetable matter. When soiling cattle is practiced, an opportunity is offered of supplying the farm with whatever it may require. If, upon examination, humus is discovered to a great degree deficient, cart decayed oak wood, and mix it with your compost heap. Each pound brought in, will absorb from the atmosphere more than 70 times its volume of gaseous ammonia; consequently the quantity of nitrogen will be large. Charcoal possesses the same valuable property in a greater degree. Chemists inform us, that it will absorb 90 times its volume of ammo