MANURE. Any substance which contains the elements of fertility, to the soil is manure. The composition and characteristics of various manures has come to be an important study wherever land has become so worn as to be infertile, and the best manner of sowing and applying to various crops, has attracted atten tion from the earliest times and in all countries. The ancients understood the value of manuring both, by plowing uuder green manure and the carting on of manure made by the feeding of animals. In modern agriculture, heavy manur ing and thorough cultivation, is, the first the sheet anchor, and the second the cable which holds profitable agriculture safely. Manures may properly be divided into three classes: Barn-yard manure, either solid or liquid, com mercial manures, and green crops plowed under. Barn-yard manure, is made of every waste sub stance about the farm, and is either applied, fresh or green, half rotted, in the form of com post, or as liquid manure, according to the nature of the soil, and the contingencies of the case. Where mechanical as well as chemical action is desirable, as on stiff soils, it is Wetter that it be applied and plowed under fresh. For crops requiring its immediate effects, and especially to root crops, it should be given half rotted, or as compost. For special crops it is applied often in its liquid state. As to the question of sheltered as against unsheltered manure, the whole matter must be resolved by the question of cost of shelter, and the price of the products reaped. There is no doubt of the advantage of sheltering manure, if it be kept moist, from strong heat ing, and consequently from fire fanging. An experiment by Lord Kinnaird, of Scotland, will show this. The soil was a rich loam, lying on trap, and the field was planted in potatoes. One acre treated with sheltered manure yielded eleven tons, seventeen cwt., fifty-six pounds of potatoes, and another acre fertilized with like manure, twelve tons, twelve cwt., twenty six pounds of potatoes; average of two acres, twelve tons, four cwt., ninety-seven pounds. One acre dressed with unsheltered manure yielded seven tons, six cwt., eight pounds of pota toes, and another, treated in like manner, yielded seven tons, eighteen cwt., ninety-nine pounds; average of two acres, seven tons, twelve cwt., fifty-three and one-half pounds. Gain in product of potatoes per acre, from application of sheltered manure, four tons, twelve cwt., forty three and one-half pounds. A similar trial was made on wheat the next year. But the season was characterized by wet weather, and the grain was soft and not in very good order. Two acres dressed with unsheltered manure yielded, of wheat, weighing sixty-one and one-half pounds per bushel, respectively, forty-one bushels, nine teen pounds, and forty-two bushels, thirty-eight pounds. Two acres dressed with sheltered manure yielded, of wheat, weighing sixty-one pounds per bushel, respectively, fifty-five bushels, and five pounds, and, fifty-three bushels, forty seven pounds. Average excess of product of wheat per acre, from the application of sheltered manure, twelve and one-third bushels of sixty pounds. Average of straw per acre from sheltered manure, 2.36 tons; from unsheltered manure, 1.72 tons, showing an excess of .64 ton from the former application. Some persons suppose that sheltered manure gains nitrogen from the air. This, however, is not true. In recent experiments by M. Boussingault on the nitrification of a vegetable mold in confined, unre newed, stagnant air, it was shown that under such conditions the nitrogen of the atmosphere takes no part in the nitrification, which is accom plished with loss of nitrogenous organic matter. The composition of manure is an important sub ject. It is now generally admitted, what has long been known to intelligent investigators, that the value of manure depends upon the food of the animal. Prof. Goessman, of Massachu setts, states the following, partly made up from German experiments: Some of the material is the fruit of recent German experiments. At a temperature of 100° centigrade, the dry substance of the entire fresh solid and liquid excretions of cattle, sheep, and horses amounts, on an average, to fifty per cent. in weight of the dry substance of the food consumed. Prof. Wolff thus states the percentage of the dry substance of the food of cattle found in the excrements : for a sheep. In general farming, if the farm stock has been well fed, 1,000 pounds of the manure will contain 4.5 pounds to 5.8 pounds of nitrogen. The commercial value of stable. manure may be approximately represented by allowing for every ton of manure ten pounds of potassa, eight pounds of nitrogen, and four pounds of phosphoric acid. On account of the highly beneficial action of stable manure on the physical condition of the soil, its agricultural value, as a rule, stands higher than that of any commercial artificial fertilizer giving the same proportions of the named constituents. But a good concentrated fertilizer may, under certain, circumstances, be a valuable assistant of stable manure. It has been customary on large estates. to calculate the nitrogen afforded by the excre tions of the entire number of farm animals at seventy-five per cent. of the nitrogen of the food consumed, allowing twenty-five per cent. for nitrogen carried off in milk, animal texture, etc. Taking cows and oxen, which require 6.5 ounces. to seven ounces of nitrogen in their daily food for each 1,000 pounds of live weight, their annual consumption of nitrogen per 1,000 pounds. of live weight would range from 148 pounds to 171 pounds. A deduction of twenty-five per cent. being made, there would remain in the fresh excrement 111 pounds to 128 pounds of nitrogen; as much as would be found in 750 to. 800 pounds of best Chincha Island guano, or in 3,200 pounds of bone meal, or in 25,000 pounds.
of half-rotted barn-yard manure. But the effi ciency of the excrements depends greatly on the preservation of the entire amount of liquids and solids. The following table, from Prof. Wolff, shows the proportion in which the nitrogen of the food is distributed in the anima] excretions. The figures exhibit the number-of parts for 10 parts of nitrogen contained in the food: On an average, the weight of dry straw required for absorption reaches one-quarter of the weight of the dry substance consumed as food. Putting the composition of stable manure as twenty-five parts dry substance and seventy-five parts water in 100, it follows that for every 100 pounds of dry-food substance consumed 300 pounds of stable manure will be produced. Placing the daily amount of dry fodder consumed at twenty four pounds for 1,000 pounds of live weight of the animal, and allowing six pounds of straw for bedding, the product of manure, in stable feed ing, of an animal of the stated weight, will amount to seventy-two pounds daily, or 26,280 pounds per year. But considerable variation exists between the different classes of animals as regards the amount of straw required for bedding; the daily requirement of wheat straw being esti mated at six pounds for a horse, eight pounds for a cow, four pounds for a pig. and 0.6 pound But the excretions of high-fed oxen often contain two and a half times as much nitrogen, and three and a half times as much phosphoric acid as those of cows or young cattle, whose milk or growth carries off a large amount of the named elements. We now come to compost. A compost of barn yard manure, is simply whatever may be col lected about the farm, piled together in a com pact heap, kept moist, and turned over often. enough to keep it from heating enough to discharge its gases, and used when it decom poses into a homogeneous mass. To facilitate this it may be mixed with swamp muck, old sods or whatever earthy material may be pro cured. Neither ashes nor lime should be mixed with fresh manure; but ashes at the rate of four or five bushels to each load of peat or swamp• muck, makes an excellent compost for special crops, as potatoes or other root crops. As a special fertilizer, compost acts immediately and hence its value for any drill, hill crops, or garden vegetables. As to the changes which take place in barn-yard and other manurial substances in the process of decomposition, the laborious experiments of Dr. Voelcker, made upon large quantities of manure, treated in various manners, for the purpose of noting results from careful analyses from time to time are interesting. It was shown that the great loss occurring to barn yard manure in the process of rotting is not the escape of ammonia into the air, for it was found that this was light, but the principal loss is in the washing out of the soluble portions by the rain. In the climate of England where evapora tion is slow, and rain falls often, this would take place to a greater extent than here, since we must use means to keep it moist enough during summer while in England, they have to guard against leaching. The idea is to keep the whole mass moist, but not dripping. The following table gives the composition in pounds of an exper imental heap of manure at four different periods, showing the changes that occurred: It is to be observed that during the first six months, although the weight of the manure largely diminished, the loss was almost exclu sively confined to the insoluble organic matters; while soluble matters had increased, and the ammonia remained undiminished. But during the hot summer weather all the most valuable matters had undergone diminution. The con clusions to which they lead are these: Farm-yard manure, in its fresh state, contains but a small quantity of most of its nitrogen being there as insoluble nitrogenous matters. But as the decomposition advances the ammonia increases, and a quantity of organic matter becomes soluble. For this reason the manure should be preserved in such a manner as to pre vent the escape of the soluble, portions which are the most valuable. This can be effected by keeping it in water tight pits, or under cover; but in the latter case the manure, particularly if it contain a large proportion of litter, is not sufficiently moist to admit of its ready fermen tation, and water must be added in sufficient quantity to promote that change. The worst of all modes of keeping manure is to pile it in heaps in the corners of the fields, for under such cumstances it is most liable to loss; and if the manure must be carted out, it is better to spread it upon the soil at once, because when this is done fermentation is stopped; and as there is very little free ammonia the loss is small, and the soluble matters are uniformly washed into the soil by the rain, Dr Voelcker is of opinion that the most advantageous mode of applying the manure would be in all cases to leave it on the surface to be washed into the soil, by which means its distribution is more uniform than if it be plowed in. The most disadvantageous mode of making manure is to produce it by cattle in open yards, for in this way at least two-thirds of the valuable matters are lost after a year's exposure. Liquid manures are the soluble portions of any substance containing plant food in combination with water. Thus, the drainings of the barn yard into any depression that becomes puddled so as to retain water, is liquid manure, but the proper way to obtain it is to prepare a tank into which it may leach without waste. Dr. Voelcker, made extensive experiments on the changes which liquid manure undergoes in soils of known composition. The following were the conclusions arrived at: Liquid manure, in contact with soil, undergoes a num ber of chemical changes.