Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1883-07-27
Manures.

The staple Fertilizers from time inn
memorial have been barn-yard manures.
In this country, however, the principal
way of manuring is by blowing under
clover. In Europe l understand they
have adopted grasses which put their
roots deeper down Among the ancient
Romans, manures were saved with care.
Then droppings of birds were saved and
applied, although they had no guano
islands to go to. Composts were made
in suitable places about the house, hol-
lows were scooped out like bowl, to
receive the wash from the dwellings.
AS the intelligent management of ma
nures and their application involves a
knowledge of chemistry, it would pay
any farmer to have some work on agri-
cultural chemistry in the house, as well
as book on manures. One gives you
the means of drawing conclusions, and
the other conclusions drawn, and both
together suggestions for their applica-
ton. The farmer is in the great labo-
ratory of nature. Everything about
him is undergoing a chemical change.
The transmutatiOn of the particles of
the soil and the elements of the air into
the fiber and fluid of vegetation, the
growth, the ripening, the decay, the
death of plants, are but names for
chemical changes. If ignorant. the
farmer is the slave of the elements. If
versed in conclusions alone, he is but
the alchemist of the Middle Ages. If
imbued with established principles of
natural law, he is master and chemist.
Aside from the assured profit which
would result from knowledge of the
science, think of the new avenues of
enjoyment it would open. The farm
then instead of being treadmill for
earning ones daily bread, or the accu-
mutation of surplus dollars, would be
work shop and a panorama, where ma
ture furnishes the force of ten thousand
men constantly coming and going, to
do your bidding and you are captain of
the host. ~ ~
Accept nothing as true which is not
self-evident, or which has not been
demonstrated, or which you can not de-
duce from established principles If
neither of these conditions obtain, go
slow; and, in this connection, / am re-
minded of an eminent gentlemen in this
State who was given to amateur farm
ing. One week he saw in his agricult-
ural paper that coal tar was excellent
for apple trees. He Immediately or
dered barrel and gave two hundred
and fifty thrifty trees a good coating of
that material. The next paper cor
rected the mistake" as they called it,
and said they meant some other mate
rial, and that coal tar would invariably
kill the trees. Now if our friend had
exercised his brains little, he must
have imagined that any substance which
would Theoretically seal the pores in the
bark would be harmful to the trees, and
that he had better go slow.
In addition to the manure of forty
head of stock, haul tour and one-half
miles the stable cleanings of one of the
street car lines where one hundred and
fifteen horses are kept. They use plan
ing mill shavings for bedding, and al
though those are decried by many as
an absorbent, and probably are not as
good as straw, they seem to do well.
Whether hauling manure so far viii
pay. l am not yet able to tell, for ]
have given it only one years trial. As
to clean cultivation, it admits of no ar
gument. - United States Senator Palm
er's address to Western Michigan Farm
erS' Club.