Page:Husbandman and Housewife 1820.djvu/84

 stances than those of actual combustion, of absorbing oxygene so as to become carbonic acid.

Manures from animal substances in general require no chemical preparations to fit them for the soil. The great object of the farmer is to blend them with earthy constituents in a proper state of division and to prevent their too rapid decomposition.

The entire parts of the muscles of land animals are not commonly used as a manure though there are many cases in which such an application might be easily made. Horses, dogs, sheep, deer and other quadrupeds that have died accidentally, or of disease, after their skins are separated are often suffered to remain exposed to the air or immersed in water, till they are destroyed by birds or beasts of prey, or entirely decomposed; and in this case most of their original matter is lost on the land on which they lie, and a considerable portion of it employed in giving off noxious gasses to the atmosphere.

By covering dead animals with five or six times their bulk of soil, mixed with one part of lime, and suffering them to remain for a few months, their decomposition would impregnate the soil with soluble matters so as to Tender it an excellent manure; and by mixing a little fresh quick lime with it at the time of its removal, the disagreeable effluvia would be in a great measure destroyed; and it might be applied in the same way as any other manure to crops.

Fish forms powerful manure in whatever state it is applied: but it cannot be ploughed in too fresh, though the quantity be limited. Mr. Young records an experiment in which herrings spread over a field and ploughed in for wheat, produced so rank a crop, that it was entirely laid before harvest.