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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3CHAPTER VI. Of Manures; Their Management And Application. The principle of fertility (the result of animal and vegetable decomposition) is, as we have seen, susceptible of solution, and in this form becomes the aliment of that artificial vegetation which is the work of man, and which leaves so little on the earth to compensate for the great deal which it takes from it. In a course of years, therefore, there will be an actual loss or subtraction of matter, useful or necessary to the growth of plants, and which can only be re established by manures of vegetable or animal origin. The most approved methods of preserving and applying these must therefore be among the objects most important to the agriculturist; and that the reader may better understand the reasons of the practice we mean to recommend, we begin the discussion with Kirwan's analysis of stable manures. textit il textit 'S ' g0 textit ? a S3 a textit K textit i Cow dung ffiutextit 3 u u '3 textit Horse dung S . 2 /Sheep dung textit M3.751.200.152. 40. fi92.8010. textit 2 25. 0 1.50 10280.50 29. 03. 0 textit 9.9. 0 0.21 0.7289.77 68.00 Tull and Du Hamel's doctrine, that frequent ploughings and sowings superseded the necessity of manure, is no longer held by any well instructed agriculturist. The maxim of Oliver de Serris is much better founded. ' Le bien labourer, le bien fumer, est tout le secret de Pagriculture.' Till well and manure well is the whole secret of agriculture. The elementary parts of these manures, as exhibited in this table, sufficiently indicate the mode of textit preserving them. When dropped in the fields and in small parcels by cattle, they exhibit no signs of fermentation, nor undergo, in that state, any degree of chymical decomposition ; but, when brought together, and frequently wetted...
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