Page:An Encyclopædia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture and Furniture.djvu/434

 410 COTTAGE, FARM, AND VILLA ARCHITECTURE, 838 839 liquor, some, if only from the droppings of horses and poultry on the passages, will find its way into it. 825. Underground Gutters for Liquid Manure. In general, there ought to be a cess- pool, or liquid manure tank, in the centre, or in the lowest part of every dung or cattle yard, or yard which is intended to be kept generally covered with litter ; or where a number of small yards, such as those of hammels, are to be placed together, one tank centrally situated may have communications with the whole. The inclination of the surface of every part of every yard should be to the cess-pool, or to the trap of the drain communicating with it; and the underground drains from the cattle-houses, stables, piggeries, &c., should always be conducted to the nearest cess-pool. These underground drains or gutters need neither be large nor deep, and may in general be formed of brick earth draining-pipe of three or four inches in diameter. To prevent the possibility of a current of air passing through these pipe drains, the end which enters the cess-pool may either have a trap there, or be carried down the side walls to near the bottom of the tank, so as always to be filled with water at their orifice. This is easily done by carrying up the requisite number of funnels in the side walls of the tank, from the bottom of the tank to the bottom of the drain, as shown in the section, fig. 840, in which a is the bottom of the tank ; b, the funnel left in its side walls ; c, the conducting drain or draining-pipe; and d, the surface of the ground. These manr ve drains, when formed of earthenware piping, may be laid a foot under the surface, and protected by side walls and an outer cover of stone, to prevent them from being injured by the wheels of carts or waggons ; or they may be sunk two feet into the ground, in which case they will be safe without any protection. The manure tank should, as we have before mentioned, § 16, always be in two divisions, that one may be fermenting while the other is filling; and there should be a pumphole in each. Were it not for the expense, we should recommend the dunghill in farmeries to be always covered with a roof, close down to the ground, to prevent evaporation, which, in all cases where the dung is not enveloped in a thick covering of dry straw, as before recommended, § 818, carries off the most nutritive part of the manure. The present clumsy mode of making manure, at a great loss of material, and at a consider- able diminution of the comfort of cattle and other animals, is unworthy of an age of science and refinement, and, we have no doubt, will soon be reformed. We see no reason why the straw should be trodden by cattle at all ; if it were placed in layers from time to time under a roof, over the manure tank, and the liquid beneath pumped up over it, such solid manure as was made in the stables ' — — ' and cattle-houses being added daily, the manure produced would be as good as if the straw had been trodden by cattle in a yard or in a cow-house ; while the loss which that practice occasions, by evaporation and by what sinks into the soil, would be saved, and the cattle preserved clean, and better in health, as well as more agreeable in appearance. Ihe mode of feeding cattle with straw is al§o in its infancy. We are persuaded that it f'40