Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/375

Rh RAPE, BLOOD, ETC.] AGRICULTURE 349 of pink-grass, rushes, hen-gorse, and other noxious weeds, exchanged for a most luxuriant herbage of wild clover, trefoil, and other succulent grasses. Though much of the clover and trefoil may disappear in five or ten years (some times they last fifteen years), an excellent herbage remains. Draining/ the writer adds, may be carried too far where bones are used, for boned lands suffer by a dry summer. The land should be kept cool. I have found the same thing on water meadows. The freer the grass is growing, the more it suffers from drought ; and this is natural, for a larger supply of sap is required. This writer adds, I have known many a poor, honest, but half-broken man, raised from poverty to comparative independence, and many a sinking family saved from inevitable ruin, by the help of this wonderful manure. Indeed, I believe, land after boning will keep three cows where two fed before. As to this practice, however, caution is necessary. It seems to belong to cold clays for grass in Cheshire, though on such soil it would hardly answer elsewhere, even for turnips. A Cheshire landlord told me that he had tried it vainly for grass in Suffolk. I know no case of its success out of Che shire, unless in the bordering counties, and have heard some cases of its failure even in those. It will not do, therefore, at all to adopt it hastily. We only know it to have succeeded about Cheshire, which is on the red marls geo logically, and on the rainy side of the country, and must remember that it is a costly proceeding, striking in its success, but as yet circumscribed in its practice, and there fore in the proof of its efficacy.&quot; 1 Section 5. Rape-Cake, &c. Rape-cake reduced to powder forms an excellent manure for wheat and other crops. It is usually applied at the rate of from tour to eight cwt. per acre. The cakes result ing after oil has been expressed from camelina, hemp, and cotton seeds, and from pistachio and castor-oil nuts, from beech and other mast, all possess considerable value as manure, and were at one time available for that purpose. Most of them now command a price for cattle feeding that forbids their use as manure unless when in a damaged state. Section 6. Blood, &amp;lt;kc. All parts of the carcases of animals form valuable manure, and are now carefully used in that way whenever they are unfit for more important uses. The blood and other refuse from shambles and from fish-curers yards, when mixed with earth and decomposed, make a valuable manure, and are eagerly sought after by farmers to whom such supplies are accessible. In London a company has been formed by whom the blood from the shambles is purchased, and em ployed instead of water in preparing superphosphate of lime, which, when thus manufactured, contains an amount of ammonia which adds considerably to its efficacy as a manure. In Australia and South America it has long been the practice to slaughter immense numbers of sheep and cattle for the sake of their hides and tallow only, there being no market for them as beef and mutton. To obtain the whole tallow, the carcases are subjected to a process of boiling by steam and afterwards to pressure, and are then thrown aside in great piles. This dried residuum is afterwards used as fuel in the furnaces of the steaming apparatus, and the resulting ashes constitute the bone-ash of commerce, which is now an important raw material in our manure factories. After many abortive attempts to convey Australian beef and mutton to the British market, the difficulty has at last been overcome by enclosing the meat in a par-boiled state in tin cases, hermetically sealed. This has already grown 1 Article by Mr Pusey. See Journal of Royal Society of England, ol .i. p. 409. to a large trade, with every likelihood of its increasing rapidly. As the meat in these cases is sent free from bone, a plan has been found for rendering the bones also a pro fitable article of export. For this purpose they are crushed into compact cakes 6 inches square by 3 inches thick, in which form they can be stowed in comparatively small space. The refuse from glue-works ; the blubber and dregs from fish-oil ; animal charcoal that has been used in the process of sugar-refining ; the shavings and filings of horn and bones from various manufactures, and woollen rags, are all made available for manure. Section 7. Night-Soil. Night-Soil is a powerful manure ; but owing to its offensive odour it has never been systematically used in Britain. Various plans are tried for obviating this objec tion, that most in repute at present being its mixture with charred peat. From the universal use of water-closets in private dwellings, the great mass of this valuable fertilising matter now passes into sewers, and is carried off by streams and rivers, and is for the most part totally lost as a manure. When sewage water is used for irrigation, as in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, it is to the night-soil dissolved in it that its astonishing effects in promoting the growth of grass are chiefly due. We have already expressed our views in regard to the use of it in this diluted form of sewage water. That mode of applying it is necessarily restricted to lands in the vicinity of towns. Hitherto the numerous and costly attempts that have been made to separate the fertilising matter from the water in which it is contained have proved utter failures. The most feasible plan for the utilisation of night-soil that we have hitherto heard of is that brought forward by the Rev. Henry Moule, Fordington Vicarage, Devon. In a tract addressed to cot tagers he says, &quot; Now, my discovery is this : The earth of your garden, if dried or dried and powdered clay will suck up the liquid part of the privy soil ; and, if applied at once and carefully mixed, will destroy all bad smell and all nasty appearance in the solid part, and will keep all the value of the manure. Three half pints of earth, or even one pint, will be enough for each time. And earth thus mixed even once is very good manure. But if, after mixing, you throw it into a shed and dry it, you may use it again and again; and the oftener 3^0x1 use it the stronger the manure will be. I have used some seven and even eight times ; and yet, even after being so often mixed, there is no bad smell with the substance ; and no one, if not told, would know what it is.&quot; To adapt a privy for using dried earth in this way, he says, &quot; Let the seat be made in the com mon way, only without any vault beneath. Under the seat place a bucket or box, or, if you have nothing else, an old washing-pan. A bucket is the best, because it is more easily handled ; only let it have a good-sized bail or handle. By the side of the seat have a box that will hold (say) a bushel of dried earth, and a scoop or old basin that will take up a pint or a pint and a half, and let that quantity of earth be thrown into the bucket or pan every time it is used. The bucket may be put in or taken out from above by having the whole cover moved with hinges ; or else, through a door in front or at the back.&quot; He has also in vented and patented an earth-closet, as a substitute for the ordinary water-closet, which he describes thus : &quot;The back contains dried and sifted earth, which enters the pan through a hole at the back of it, and covers the bottom. The bottom is moved by the handle and lever ; the side of the pan acts as a scraper ; and all that is upon the bottom is pushed off, falling into the bucket or shaft below. The earth thus applied at once prevents fermentation, and almost all exhalation and offensive smell The bottom returns to