Page:An Encyclopædia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture and Furniture.djvu/435

 MODEL DESIGNS FOR FARMERIES. 411 would pay a farmer to have his straw cut by a machine into lengths of three or four inches ; and afterwards to have it boiled or steamed, and mixed with a portion of succulent food of some kind. For litter and tliatch the larger and stronger the straw is kept the better ; but both for eating and for manure it would be more easily managed if cut into short lengths. The science and the art of making manure are alike miknown to the great majority of even the best British farmers, and will be so till they learn something of chemistrj'. In every farmyard, at present, it may safely be affirmed that there is nearly as much manure lost as made. A liquid manure tank, connected by underground tubes with the back-kitchen, and kitchen-court, with all the privies, and with all the houses or yards in which cattle are kept, in short with every source of water impregnated with animal or vegetable matter or with any of the alkalies, would alone, on a large farm, supply manure for several acres yearly. Even supposing the manure tank not to be adopted, the mere circumstance of placing all the dung made on a farmery in one dunghill under a roof, where its more valuable parts would neither be washed away by the rain nor carried off by the sun and wind, would be an immense saving. We say nothing here of other sources of manure, such as stall-feeding, which ought to be universally substituted for grazing, &c. We strongly reconmnend the subject of employing manure tanks and dunghill roofs to the land stewards of counti-y gentlemen, and to scientific agriculturists, and rural Architects generally. 826. The Liquid Manure Tank, to be generally adopted, ought to be of a verj- simple construction ; for which purpose a square or a parallelogram plan, with pei-pendicular side and end walls, and a semicircular arch over, with a manhole in the centre for the pump, and for entering to clear out the interior, may be recommended as of easy erection by any country bricklayer or mason. The walls may be built with common mortar, pro-ided they are well puddled behind with clay ; but cement will make the strongest work, and will render a clay puddle unnecessary. In some parts of Germany, where timber is abundant, the liquid manure tank is made ten or twelve feet wide, about the same depth, and is covered with joists of wood, on which first coarse litter, and afterwards the stable and cattle dmig, are put as made. 827. Gates for farmyards and fields are commonly treated of in works on Farm Architecture; and a very excellent wooden one is given by Waistell, which we have copied in our Encyclopedia of Agriculture. We shall here, therefore, confine ourselves to two very strong and cheap iron gates, and to a mode of opening gates, which, though chiefly applicable to gates on public roads, may also be occasionally adopted with entrance gates to farms, or fanneries. ^^ 828. Buchanan of Catrine's Field or Farm Gate, fig. 841, on a scale of five sixteenths of an inch to a foot, is composed of a frame or rim of bar iron, seven feet long and four feet high, one inch and three quarters broad, and three eighths of an inch thick, not riveted, but welded at the angles, and the rim presenting its edge to the face of the gate. The head style and the falling style are each projected about three inches above the rim, for the purpose of retaining a horizontal rail of wood, about three inches by two inches, placed on the top bar, in order to render it more conspicuous to cattle than the narrow edge of the top of the iron rim. The diagonal strutt or brace is of the same breadth and thickness as the surrounding rim, to which it is firmly riveted at both extremities. Tlie vertical round rods are eleven ; six of them are three quarters of an inch in diameter, and five are five eighths of an inch ; they are riveted into the top and bottom rails, and firmly fixed into the brace, by being put through it cold while the brace is red-hot. 'flie