TOOL HOUSE. An indispensable building, (either separate or attached to some other) dry and well ventilated, where tools, implements, machinery, etc., may be stored, when not in use. Such tools as are required for use every day, or at short intervals, should occupy such a position as to be easily accessible. The work shop may naturally occupy a portion of this building, and be provided with a carpenter's bench, saw horses, saddler's seat, and the tools, such as axes, planes, chisels, bits, augurs, needles, awls, thread, etc., for repairing.
TOP DRESSIN(i. Top dressing is that form of manuring where the fertilizing material is applied to the surface of the earth, instead of being plowed under, as for instance, in the case of meadows, pastures, young wheat, and other cereal grains, young grass, orchards, etc. It may be intended to act simply as a fertilizer, or to effect the two-fold purpose of a mulch to protect a crop during the winter, and at the same time produce fertilization. In the latter case green manure may be applied in the autumn, and the long straw be raked together, and carted away in the spring, unless the crop is of such a nature that it will readily grow through. If a meadow or pasture, it should be raked off. If grain, it may be applied more thinly, and the grain will grow through. As a rule, however, a top dressing should consist of well rotted manure or compost. Of mineral substances, ashes, lime, gypsum, and salt are used ; of commercial fertilizers, superphosphate, guano, poudrette, and other manures of like nature, should he lightly harrowed in, to save waste. Liquid manure is always used as a top dressing. It is one of the most valuable in the whole category of manures, and prompt in its action. Or these, the diluted urine of animals, leakage from compost heaps, and sewage waste are most generally used. In relation to the philosophy of top dressing, Prof. Johnson says: Fresh stable manure contains some seventy per cent. of water, twenty-five per cent. of vegetable and animal matters, and five per cent. of salts and mineral substance. If we put it on a cloth strainer, and slowly wash it with the rain of a watering pot, we shall dissolve out a portion of the organic matter, (some two per cent.,) and a portion of the salts, (some four or five per cent.) and we shall, besides, drive through the cloth some of the fine particles of the manure that do not actually dissolve; but the coarse parts will remain on the strainer. The same happens on the ground. The most active fertilizing ments are carried into the soil in solution, the undissolved matters which exist in a state of fine division are mechanically carried into the soil to an extent depending upon its porosity, while the coarse matters—the straw of the litter—remain on the surface. Now, what happens to dissolved matters, consisting of humic acid, which gives the brown color to dung liquor, and of ates, phosphates and sulphates, of ammonia, potash, lime, magnesia and soda? Are they liable to run to waste? No more, it would pear, than if the manure was buried in the soil. Not so much, in fact, as in the latter case, because they have more soil to pass through before they can escape into the springs. If the soil is fine in texture, has enough'fine earth, or rather that retentive power over the soluble ters of manure which reside in the fine earth, and which enables good soil to filter out and hold in its pores these soluble matters, so that you can put dung heap liquor into a leach tub half full of such earth, and pure drinkable water will run out below, then you need fear no waste. But if the soil is coarse in texture, and water runs through it very rapidly, and dung heap liquor is i not much clarified and sweetened by passing it, then the manure may suffer decided loss.Yet i again, in case of the coarse, open soil, if it be full of grass roots or grain roots, which are ready to absorb the dissolved matters as soon and as fast as the spring rains descend, you may lose, indeed, sonic manure ; but you may-also do well to lose a part of it, in order to put another greater part where the growing crops will be certain to pay hack for all the expenditure and give a Margin of profit besides. On light, unretentive land, bare of vegetation, do not apply manure to the sur face during the winter. A principal benefit of stable manure to such soil consists in mixing with the bulky, insoluble matters of the dung aud litter which are of the most porous and moisture holding character, and which operate to counteract the leachy and droughty qualities of the soil. On such land hold the manure in reserve, carefully protected by cover if practic able, and bury it in the soil where the pushing roots of the new sowr crops will find it, and where it will be food to the plant not only, but drink also, in virtue of its hygroscopic nature, all the summer through. The presence of abun dance of stable manure in such a soil enables it to hold a much greater proportion of the rain that falls upon it; less rain runs off into the streams; there is less leaching, therefore, of plant food; at the same time there is increase of plant drink. This point can only be appreciated when we know that the evaporation of water through the foliage of crops amounts to 5,000,000 pounds per acre every season, and must go on whether there is rain to supply it or not. After having, by any proper system of management, so altered the texture of leachy soil that it will hold almost all the water that falls upon it ; after having incorporated with it vegetable matter in consider able quantities, and mixed with coal ashes— leached ashes, perhaps—so that the soil has a great many fine pores, and so that the rain pene trates it slowly, and but little runs away alto gether, then we have practically a different con dition of things, and need not fear loss by drainage. The more the soil approaches that state which is implied by the term loamy, the more we can risk our manure upon the surface when the crop is not there. One effect of surface manuring upon soils which are in grass or occu pied with crops or upon soils not thus occupied, if they are retentive of the element of fertility, has keen mentioned by Dr. Hatch, that is, a deci ded effect on the texture of the soil. The Ger mn farmers have a special word for it; they call it fermentation, aud have written books upon it. There is a kind of texture which is proper to land in good condition, something like that which you find in a well-cultivated garden. It is a thing which it is rather difficult to des cribe; but, when you once understand what it is, you can easily identify it. It is a sort of mellow ness of the soil. If you take up a board which has been laying in a walk, you will see a differ ence between the soil underneath that board and the soil close at hand. There is a friability, a fineness, or something about that soil which is apparently very agreeable to the roots of plants.
Dr. Ha ch remarked that sod upon which manure had been laying during the winter broke up more easily and was a different sort of thing from sod where this had not happened. This quality depends chiefly upon the protection which the cover, be it hoard, stone or, manure, affords against the dashing of the rain, which compacts and puddles the surface, and against the drying effects of sun and wind, which tend to form a crust. The shelter keeps the earth uniformly moist, and as friable at the surface as it is below, or as its nature admits. It also favors the burrowing of earth-worms, grubs and other insects at the surface, which otherwise must go deeper to enjoy the moisture they require. This shelter, then, of surface-strewn litter is a cheap tillage; or takes the place of tillage to some extent; and on soils of certain texture is very favorable, or at least is thought to be by many intelligent, practical men. Speaking of the value of night-soil as a fertilizer, Mr. Clift said: I have been in the habit for five and twenty years of utilizing night-soil—taking the contents of the privy as prepared, and spreading them in the garden, upon my mowing-fields, and using them in the cultivation of almost all kinds of crops, especially garden crops, and I have eaten, and my family have eaten very freely of the vari ous kinds of vegetables and fruits which have grown on this soil, which is pretty thoroughly saturated with night-soil. I have never discov ered that it has done me or them any harm. The celery that is grown with this kind of fertilizer I know to be of very fine flavor, and I prefer to use it rather than any other in the cultivation of celery in trenches, where the application has been not only of the solid contents of the privy, but the liquid manure, of course very greatly diluted, applied to the growing crop. It makes very gc,od celery, it makes good potatoes, it makes good sweet corn, good cabbages, good turnips, and good everything that I want to grow in the garden; and if it has ever done my family any harm, I have never found it out. Dr. Riggs spoke as follows of the earth-closet system and the value of night-soil when prepared in this way: The earth-closet system is true in theory, and it is true in every way; but, unhap pily, it has never been applied until lately, and now not perfectly. The vaults of our privies should be so arranged that they should he regu lar manure factories, and so that a man can go into them in the winter time and manipulate the manure by mixing dry earth with it. This earth —no matter if it is nothing but light, loamy soil, what we call yellow dirt is just as good—should be dry. When it is dry, it mixes with the night soil and deodorizes it completely, so much so, that you could carry it in a snuff hox and pre sent it to your neighbor, and he could not tell of what it was composed. Now, other manures should be deodorized in the same way, but night soil especially should have that treatment. The cellar for composting of that material should be so arranged that it can be easily removed; we should have it under control. Coal ashes have considerable alkali, but it is in the form of car bonate of lime. The composition of coal ashes is carbonate of lime, alumina, and oxide of iron —valuable as far as it goes, and very valuable on light, sandy soil. Like the application of other carbonates, it makes light land heavier and more adhesive, and it has the contrary effect on clays; but it should not be composed with any manure any more than should lime. A point in which I think they are lacking iu the stables we have visited, although the management is excellent, is this; the manure lacks packing. It is the carbonate of lime that causes that evap oration or the development of gases, and if it was thoroughly packed by those pigs, (that is their true field of action) they would find their manure much richer and much stronger when they undertook to get it out than they will under the present arrangement. That has been my experience. I have tried lime in compost heaps where there was nothing but vegetable matter, and it is very valuable, but in night-soil it is per fectly destructive to the fertilizing qualities; that is, in the main. I think it causes loss, so that it is not as good, or certainly no better, than road scrapings, or the soil that we get by the side of our fences. I think that we ought to have a proper reservoir made, not merely large enough for the excrement, both liquid and solid, to be kept during the year, but to give room for its manipulation, by throwing on this dry earth to deodorize it. Copperas, sulphate of iron, is very good, better than anything else, to deodorize a vault. You may take the strongest manure, and put in a few quarts of pulverized copperas, either in the form of a solution or a fine powder, and it will deodorize it so completely without any earth at all that you will hardly know what you are shoveling. It is better than plaster in a cellar like the one of which I am speaking. It costs more, but you can buy it by the quantity at about a cent and three-quarters or two cents a pound. You will find that copperas water or cop peras sprinkled over, it, will deodorize it so com pletely that your men will not object to working in it. Mr. Weld, of New York, gave his method of securing and preserving the contents of the privy as follows: I think a vault is a nuisance. There is a box which slides under the privy, which I originally had on runners, but I found it more con venient to knock the runners off, slip the box on at stone-boat and carry it off. The box is four and one-half or five feet long, two feet wide, and four teen inches deep. There is a constant supply of dry earth kept in the privy, and when any mem ber of my family uses the closet a dipper of earth is thrown in. It is not a very disagreeable thing to do, nor is there any thing disagreeable about keeping the box clean. The stone-boat is brought down, the box is raised with a crow-bar, for it is rather heavy to lift, the stone-boat shoved under, and the box is carried off, and the con tents put on the top of the ground, or worked right into the garden. The manure does not deteriorate if left on the surface. The box is emptied a good many times a year, although I have but a small family, And the more dirt goes in it the better it is. It works easily. I fre quently go in, and to the disgust of the man whose business it is to keep the earth box full, throw on half the contents of the box so as to be sure to have dirt enough. It is always crumb ling, so that there is no trouble about applying it. The foregoing will apply to the saving of all offensive manures in their natural state. All such manures are also most valuable for top dres sing, but are better if slightly covered under.