Wilmington journal. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1844-1895, 1850-11-29
Agricultural.

Hats about Manure. s@sss
EXTRACT OF LECTURE ON AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY 81 J.
Having spoken of the origin of manure, and hay-
ing think clearly proven to you that 1t Is all pro-
duced from vegetables, and that animals have no
power whatever to add single atom to the vegta-
bic matter received into their system, and they de-
post less in the land than they receive in the shape
of food let me proceed to speak of the methods
of manufacturing manure And, gentlemen, you
often mix your dung in manner which must say
shows great want of practical knotctcdge. have
seen placed in position where all the water
from the outbuildings poured down upon it, and
washed the soluble matter away into a neighboring
pond there to poison the horses. have gone among
heaps of dung which were steaming away at fear
full rate, and my nostrs have instantly informed me
of the escape of substance which has very high
price in the market yet the practical man appeared
TO be quite unaware that he was losing of the
most valuable ingredients ofmanure, namely, ammo
MIA he did not appear to imagine that he had any
means whatever of helping himself. Now wish to
point out how pleasant it would be to the pocket to
have little more knowledge on this subject: it is
the pocket after all which suffers most You may
term me theoretical, if you please; but must say
that think there as many crude theories among
the so-called practical men as ever emanated from
the brains of all the scientific of the world
bined. Now let US look at this manure. When the
chemist comes to examine it. he finds that there are
certain ingredients in manure which are naturally
Volatile which become volatile in the process of
fermentation and go off into thin air, fnot prevented
that there other substances which soluble in
water become soluble in the process of ermenta-
tion and which, if acted upon by water are carried
away; and that there are other ingredients which
neither very volatile very soluble. Now, to
bring chemistry to bear further than this, the
question really is how to stop the volatile substan-
ces from going into the air. and how to prevent the
soluble from being washed away. 1t so happens
that these very substances-the volatile and the
luble-are those which it costs most money in the
market to import upon the farm, whether the farm
er obtains them in the form of guano in any other
form Now it is certainly very easy to arrest of
these wasting processes that to say the washing of
the manure there is no difficulty in preventing the
liquid manure from being washed away; and whatev-
er the farmer may say to the loss being tridng
am prepared to prove that on some farms which
have seen, Of five six hundred acres in extent the
loss was at least 1000 year. Nov this say, can
in great degree be prevented. Ifthe farmer, or his
landlord, will not go to the expense of having the
farmyard completely covered over like rcttcay sta
ton, he ght at least by shoots CUTTERS prevent
the rain from the buildings falling the dung the
redundant liquid and urine from the dung-heap and
cattle should be conveyed into reservoir and in dry
weather pumped back again over the straw, which
will thus more quickly suffer decomposition. You
are all aware that vegetable matter decomposes most
readily in contact with animal matter. In illustra-
ton and in proof of this, need only refer to the
matched buildings where pigeons are kept. You al
ways find that portion of the thatch where the pi-
geons deposite their excrements gives way first
While, therefore, you to pump the urine back a.
gain to allow decomposition to take place more
quickly than it otherwise would do the next ques-
ton is how to prevent the escape of the volatile
terials Of these volatile matters is called am
monia and is easily arrested by means of gypsum,
or, what is better still, sulphuric acid
Well, then, gentlemen, we have seen that you may
arrest the volatile matters, the ammonia by ap-
plying gypsum sulphuric acid hardly like to
name these things among practical men, lest should
be censured. l know that some persons have such
antipathy to chemical names as to consider them
anything else rather than terms applied to desig
nate substances in nature. But will venture to
speak of one or two other things by name. There
is the charcoal vegetable matter in this manure
which goes off into the atmosphere by the action OF
the air, In the same way as the Goals disappear from
fireplace where nothing is left but the ashes; the
charcoal having assumed the form of the gas and
gone into the air. Now similar action takes place
in the of manure; and if it be allowed to pro-
ceed almost every particle of the charcoal will pass
into the air. Then there is hydrogen another long
name for of the constituents of water. Another
substance is nitrogen These also found in farm
yard dung, and they apt to hop away into the
air if decomposition be allowed to proceed too far.
Therefore l recommend you not to allow decomposi-
ton to go beyond certain extent, but to let the
nure rot and decompose in the land