remains in your soils. I met with a farmer in the north of England, who informed me that he had absolutely destroyed an extensive farm by using lime in excessive quantities; his first application being large, produced wonderful results, with which he was so much pleased that he made another still larger, which to his surprise lessened materially the crop. Not attributing the decrease to the lime, but to the season; he made a third, and entirely destroyed the fertility of his farm. He considered lime a manure alone, whereas it should be known mainly as a stimulant, and must be used to promote the fertility of a soil permanently. When once applied, it remains in the land until removed by the crops; therefore, when found necessary, make a liberal contribution to the soil, and be satisfied with the results.

THE PROPERTIES OF MANURE.

By R. L. PELL, Pellham, N. Y.

There is not a subject of more vital importance to the country than manure. Without it in some shape, the agriculturist cannot by any possibility succeed in his avocation. It never was intended by the Deity that man should annually take from the soil its productions and make no return. Such has been the case in Virginia. The tobacco grower has successively taken from his fields the tobacco plant, root and branch. Mark the consequence. A curse has pursued him—his fields have ceased to produce-he has become impoverished and at this moment, vast tracts that have once been fertile are now barren wastes.

If our farmers paid proper attention to their interests, there is scarcely one among us who has not in his immediate vicinity, or on his very farm, almost every requisite to grow the cereal grains, and instead of producing fifteen bushels of wheat to the acre, might obtain sixty. We all have straw, hay, weeds, stalks, &c., which consist of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, alkaline and earthy salts, all indispensable manures, yet they are all sold from our premises, except the weeds, which are permitted to grow, come to maturity, sow their seeds and go to waste. If you would grow wheat crops on your ground continuously, all that is necessary is to return the straw, if to it you add the ingredients, small in quantity, taken away by the grain, phosphates, &c. Thus you give to the land every chemical ingredient, from potash to chlorine, that the ensuing crop requires, as the straw and grain contain, by analysis, precisely the same chemical ingredients, and like produces like.

.Let every farmer accumulate his weeds, straw, refuse stalks, leaves, muck, swamp mud, sand, clay, night soil, charcoal dust, coal ashes, the excrements of his horses, horned cattle, pigs and fowls, not neglecting the liquid manures in his yard, under cover, and when decomposed and properly incorporated, he has a capital on which to commence his agricultural operations that will carry him through every difficulty. The liquids are, in nine cases out of ten, allowed

to run over the yard, where it becomes putrid, loses its nitrogen, which passes off in the shape of ammonia, its salts are carried away by rain, and nearly all its valuable properties are evaporated by the atmosphere. Thus the ammonia and alkaline salts, the most valuable portion of the manure, and without which neither plants nor seeds can exist, are lost. It is the want of these substances that causes our lands to produce miserable crops, and sometimes entire sterility is the result.

A farmer should on no. account sell his hay or straw, without returning an equivalent in manure; if he does, his crops will decrease, and finally his land will cease to produce. His constant study should be to increase his manure heaps, by every means in his power, and to become acquainted with his soil chemically, which knowledge may soon be acquired. If your soil requires potash, use ashes; soda, lime and magnesia may be purchased-ammonia and hartshorn are the same thing. Nitric, muriatic and sulphuric acids are extensively sold in commerce. Phosphoric acid may likewise be purchased of the apothecary. All these substances are indispensal le in a soil, to produce either the cereal grains, cruciferous, or leguminous plants. Buy them, mix them with 300 times their weight of mould, and apply them to your plants; you will be astonished at the result. By this means I was enabled to raise large crops and heavy grains, long before the works of Sprengel, Johnston, Liebig, &c., were published.

Bear one thing in mind: all the manures you use to improve your soils and to become useful to plants as food, cannot be of the least service to them except in a liquid state; that is to say, if you present your growing crops with bones, fish, lime, potash, soda, muck or compost from your stable yards, they are all dissolved by some process of nature, before the plants can absorb them. That is the reason plants grow so much more rapidly when liquid manure is used upon them, than when a dry composition is made use of.

Davy ineffectually tried the finest impalpable powder of dry charcoal upon plants, in hopes they would imbibe it, but it was fruitless. He found that no manure could be taken up by the roots of plants, unless water was present. The early Egyptian philosophers falsely asserted that water was the only food of plants. They probably came to that conclusion by noticing the magic fertilizing properties of the waters of the Nile, when it overflowed its banks.

Veit says: "plants are nourished only by sucking in the nutritious substance, in a fluid or gaseous form, out of the earth or air, by

means of their roots or leaves." Nourishing substances must therefore be soluble in water; and if a substance is thus insoluble, it must first be dissolved by the agency of some other substance, and in its new combination become soluble in water, before it is to be considered as nourishment or manure.

When chemists speak of a rich soil, they mean one which contains a large quantity of humus or organic remains.

Humus, which, according to Liebig, is the decayed fibre of wood, and is characterized by Thaer as "a mould not properly an carth, but a powdery substance, in a greater or less degree found in the soil." The fruitfulness of the soil depends on its proportions, as likewise it is the only thing in the soil that gives nutriment to plants: it is the remains of vegetable and animal putrefaction. If dry, it is black and powdery; if moist, it has a smooth fatty feeling, and it is different according to the bodies out of which it is formed; but it has certain general peculiarities or properties in which it is essentially alike.

Humus is a form of organic power, a combination of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, and also in less quantities of sulphur, phosphorus, and various salts; it gives nourishment to oganism: the more life there is, the more humus, the more life.

For examples in agriculture, we may look to the Chinese; they are known to be the best agriculturists in the world, the best and most scientific gardeners, and the best trainers of plants. Our inquiry would naturally be, what manure do they use? Is it the manure from horses? No; they are seldom used by them in agriculture. From stall fed cattle? No; the stall feeding of cattle is unknown to them. Human ordure? Yes; and why? Because man eats all varieties of food. The excrement of man contains every known requisite to the growth of plants.

Professor Liebig says, in respect to the quantity of nitrogen contained in excrements, 100 parts of the urine of a healthy man, are equal to 1300 parts of the fresh dung of a horse, and to 600 parts of that of a cow. Hence it is evident, that it would be of much importance to agriculture, if none of the human urine were lost. The powerful effect of urine as a manure, is well known in Flanders; but human excrements are considered invaluable by the Chinese, who are the oldest agricultural people we know. Indeed, so much value

is attached to their influence by these people, that laws of the State forbid that any of them should be thrown away, and reservoirs are placed in every house, in which they are collected with the greatest care. No other manure is used for their corn fields.

The following estimate I found in Johnson's Farmers' Encyclopædia, showing the waste of invaluable manures in large cities: He says, by carefully conducted experiments, and very accurate guagings, it has been found, that the chief of London sewers convey daily into the Thames, about 115,000 tons of mixed drainage, consisting, on an average computation, of one part of solid and 25 parts absolutely fluid matters. Allowing one part in 30 of this immense mass to be composed of solid substances, then we have the large quantity of more than 3,800 tons of solid manure, daily poured into the Thames from London alone, consisting principally of excrements, soot, and the debris of the London streets, which is chiefly carbonate of lime; thus allowing 20 tons of this manure as a dressing for an acre of ground, there is evidently a quantity of solid manure annually poured into the river, equal to fertilizing more than 50,000 acres of the poorest cultivated land! The quantity of food thus lost to the country by this heedless waste of manure, is enormous, for only allowing one crop of wheat to be raised on these 50,000 acres, that would be equal to the maintenance of 150,000 persons. London is only one instance of this thoughtless waste of agricultural riches of the soil of England. How is it in our own country, and even in our own city? Are not the corporation of New-York now constructing sewers through all the principal streets, leading directly to the Hudson, with a view of carrying to that great receptacle substances that might, if saved for agricultural purposes, help to support thousands?

The fertilizing liquid produced annually by our population of 400, 000, would amply manure 60,000 acres of worn out land, and make it yield to the amount of $4,000,000, to say nothing about anthracite coal ashes, soot, charcoal dust, and the plaster taken from the walls of houses that are daily pulled down, which latter is a valuable manure. I am informed that the Chinese will take down an old wall and replace it with a new one, to obtain the old one as maAll these substances, and many others, that are daily wasted. in our cities, might be saved. In different parts of Europe, there is a substance now in use to disinfect filth, and the product is called animal black; it renders inodorous any substance to which it may be applied. There is now in this city an agent from some European company, about arranging to disinfect cispools, and render the contents portable and inoffensive. If such an arrangement can be made,