Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/372

Rh 346 AGRICULTURE [MANURES. equal to that of the old meadows near Edinburgh, instead of being less, AS it is made to appear. A gain, in estimating the profits an opposite course is followed. While the charges are made to appear less by spreading them over the whole area of the farm, the enormous produce of grass from the irrigated parts is put prominently forward, and little is said about its produce as a whole. In the dairy cases, too, we are told of enormous gross profits, without being pointedly reminded that the larger portion of the keep of the cows, such as distillery offal, bean-meal, hay, and even straw and turnips, is actually purchased ; that in this way a quantity of extraneous manure becomes available for the associated farm, sufficient (however applied) to maintain it in a state of fertility ; and that there would be handsome profits from the dairy, irrespective of the farm altogether. In fact, town dairies usually have no land attached to them. The cows are maintained solely by purchased food, and the sale of manure, liquid and solid, forms one of the stated items of income. In Mr Harvey s and similar cases, two separate businesses are in fact mixed up, and yet the whole is spoken of in such a way as if the profit was mainly due to the use of liquid manure. Indeed, the whole of these Minutes of Information issued by the General Board of Health have an air of special pleading about them, which to us seriously detracts from their value. The entire annual cost of applying manure in this manner is stated to amount to from 10s. to 14s. per acre for the whole extent of the farm. Now this would suffice to provide annually from 1 to l cwt. of Peruvian guano (even at its present high price) for every acre of the farm, or from 2 to 3, cwt. per acre, if applied, as the liquid is, to the portion under green crop only. The stated application of such a dressing of guano, in separate portions, and during showery weather, will be found to yield results little inferior to those obtained by the use of liquid manure. To do this requires no costly apparatus or permanent sinking of capital, and its application can be desisted from at any time when found unremunerative. The adoption of this plan of applying the liquid manure of the farm necessarily demands that the whole system of management be accommodated to it. In order to furnish this liquid manure, the whole green crops must, summer and winter, be conveyed to the homestead, and there consumed in such a manner as that the urine and dung of the animals fed upon it may be scoured into the tanks. It is no such easy matter to replenish these tanks as some persons seem to think. When cattle are housed in boxes or properly protected yards, the whole of the urine is absorbed by the litter, and goes to the field in the dung- cart. This is certainly a more expensive way of conveying it to the fields than by pipes. But then, as in the new system, the urine, &amp;lt;tc., is diluted with at least three times its volume of water, there are four tons of manure to con vey on the one plan for one on the other. Even where pipes -are used, all the litter, and a portion at least of the dung, has still to be carted out, so that no claim of a saving of carriage can validly be put forward on behalf of this system ; but its merits must be grounded solely on the superior efficacy of manure, when applied in a liquid instead of a solid form. In the case of dry and loose soils, the consuming of the turnip crop, by folding sheep upon it, has hitherto been regarded as at once the cheapest way in which it can be converted into wool and mutton, and the land consolidated and enriched, so as to fit it for producing grain and other crops. On tenacious soils, and in a moist climate, which is quite the case at Myremill, it is certainly impracticable to pursue this system in winter. It is perhaps also the case that sheep are healthier, fatten more rapidly, and yield more wool, when fed under cover, than when folded on the open turnip field. Admitting all this, however, we are disposed to think that these benefits are oetter secured by Mr RandeH of Chadbury s plan of littering the pens with burnt clay, which keeps the sheep clean, and their feet in good order, and, when mingled with their urine and dung, forms a most valuable manure for any kind of land. Were this carried out by means of movable covered pens, which could bo erected and easily shifted from place to place in the turnip field, the carriage of the turnips and manure would be greatly reduced, especially if accomplished by means of the portable railway. In the case of dairies near towns, where the cows are largely fed on brewery or distillery offal and other purchased food, the circumstances are totally different from those of ordinary farms, depending solely on their own resources. The liquid manure that would otherwise run to waste, when thus applied, is so much clear gain, in so far as the value of the increased produce exceeds the cost of application. It may form a wholesome caution to some persons to men tion here that, notwithstanding all that has been written about the success of the spirited operations at Port-Dundas, we were told by Mr Harvey, that so dubious is he still about it, that if the thing were to do again, he would rather keep his money in his pocket, and let the urine run into the canal as formerly. If there is doubt even in such a case, how much more when the manure must virtually be purchased. And this leads us to remark that we have better hopes of the ultimate success of this plan of manuring, when it is restricted to the application of the surplus liquid manure of the homestead to some piece of meadow near at hand, supplementing this supply, when necessary, by dissolving guano in water, and sending it through the pipes. These remarks apply even more strongly to the sewage from towns. The liquid, in this case, is highly charged with fertilising ingredients of the most valuable kind, seeing that it con sists largely of night-soil from a population consuming much animal food. With few exceptions, this valuable liquid, which flows in such quantities from all our towns, is not only utterly lost, but is a grievous nuisance, by polluting our streams and generating disease. In applying it as manure, the expense lies entirely in providing and working the necessary apparatus. In such cases, then, with an un failing supply of highly fertilising liquid, costing nothing to begin with, there is every inducement to put into opera tion any plan by which it can be economically applied to field crops. The enhanced value of green forage in tlio vicinity of towns is an additional motive for attempting this. The profitable disposal of town sewage in a way neither injurious to the health nor offensive to the senses of the community, is, however, a problem yet remaining to be solved. The ingenuity and enterprise displayed by Mr Kennedy and others, in their endeavours to cheapen by this means the cost of farm produce, and the frankness and untiring patience with which they have shown and explained their proceedings to the unceasing stream of visitors, which the novelty of the operations attracted from all parts of the kingdom, and even from foreign countries, are altogether BO admirable and praiseworthy that it requires no slight effort to speak of them otherwise than approvingly. The con fidence with which various influential parties have proclaimed the complete success of this scheme of irrigation, and recom mended it for general adoption, seems, however, to require that those who have examined it, and arrived at an opposite conclusion, should publicly say so. It is unreasonable to expect that private parties are to divulge their whole business affairs ; and yet, without a full Dr. and Or. account for some ordinary arable farm treated on this system, it is impossible to arrive at a sound judgment on its merits. Until this can be done, it would be better to abstain from publishing partial statements, which tend only