The Arizona sentinel., 1886-01-16
MANURES AND MANURING.
The Pleasing Lessons a Farmer May Lear
 In in, His Nards

standing of human nature. But while his knowledge of practical agriculture was extensive. yet we do not find that he had any of that insight into the inner life of the farm which might have been expected from the greatest poet the world has produced. We are led to this remark by reading the lines of his in which he says:
 "The earth's thief
 That feeds and breeds by comp osture
 lstolen From general excrement."
 This is a low and base view of the necessary practice of manuring and a very imperfect idea of what manure is. True, the common understanding of it is much like this, but it is not just or worthy one in any sense. Manure is by no means wholly excrementitious mat ter, nor was it so in Shakespeare s time, when the art of making composts and the use of burned clay and lime were commonly practiced. And even recommendations matter, although disagreeable and disgusting to the com mon sense, when considered as manure, loses its offensiveneSS, and may even be thought of with something akin to pleas ure as one considers the wonderful trans formations wrought by nature in the processes of manuring and the growth of plants. Instead of the coarse words of the poet might be used the truer ones:
 "The earth's a'recreator,
 Which out of death makes life,
 And from dead matter brings
 New verdure, flowers and fruits."
 Such, indeed, is the true sense in which manure is to be considered. It is dead matter; the surplus waste of life, and the beautiful clover blossom which the farmer blows under the furrow should be no more highly thought of in its manurial sense than the refuse of it after it has contributed to the support of a COW and her product of delicious milk and rich, unctuous cream and fragrant golden butter. All dead matter is disa- greeable. The disgust of Hamlet as he smelled the decayed skull which the old grave-digger threw out of the re-dug grave was far different from the tender ness with which related survivor would regard the similar cherished remains of an ancestor. It is the sense in which we consider such things which gives offense in one case and pleasure in another. And the farmer who glories in the big ness of his manure pile never experi- ences the disgust of the stranger who passes along the road on the other side of the fence, and, as Hamlet remarked, thinks, if he does not say: "And smells so; faughr'
 The thoughtful farmer may learn many pleasing and instructive lesson as he works in his yards, and makes his compost heaps, spreads the manure, top dresses his wheat, which is to make the fragrant new baked loaf which is lux ury unsurpassed on the table, and watches the change of this dead waste matter into the verdant luxuriant herb age; the Sweet-scented rose, the luscious peach, the melting sugary pear, the juicy grape, the fattening corn, and the infinitely varied products of the garden, the orchard and the field. How it is done is a mystery which the chemist can not reveal to him, nor how the mal- OdorouS wastes can be made to produce the various sweet scents and agreeable tlavors which all these products possess. Nevertheless, faint idea of it may be gained as the farmer on the winter even- ings studies his handbooks of chemistry, and learns that the pear odor, the pine apple flavor and the numerous favoring odors and essences of the cook are al- most identical in composition with some of the most intolerable scents of the al- cohols and the ethers, and by what a comparatively small and inconsiderable change of elements these effects are pro- duced, Tn many cases mere rearrange- ment of atoms, much in the same man. ner as one might rearrange a pile of bricks into a round or square or octag- Onal one, or into long, narrow one, or into short, wide one, and with the very same materials form entirely diff ferent combinations. This is rough and familiar way of explaining this kind of chemical combinations of atoms, but it expresses the precise nature of the change and hel lps to make it under stood.
 Maturing is entirely chemical pro- cess, and the ordinary barnyard manure differs only in form from those so-called artificial compounds which we term commercial fertilizers. Indeed we have often an erroneous conception of what manure is, for the majority of farmers believe it contains everything that is needed by the soil for the production of crops; while on the contrary it is largely deficient in the most valuable clements, and the larger part of it consists of water and carbonaceous elements which some persons would have us believe are worthless for plant food. The truth is and it has only been learned within forty years past-that farmers can not depend on the barnyard alone for ma nure, but are compelled to use every fertilizing substance which they can procure, and that nitrate of soda, phos- phate of lime, lime, gypsum, salt, pot ash, magnesia and various nitrogenous substances are indispensable for the profitable culture of farm crops, includ- ing fruits, to help out the deficiencies of manure. But manure differs in no de- gree from these substances in its ele- ments; its form is different, and so is its source, and the farmer may reasonably look upon all of them in the same light precisely, as plant food, and material from which new and living matter is produced by a process and change as wonderful in its power and wisdom as the original creation of organized liv- ing substance.-Henry Stel0art, in ". r. Times
 A lady from Michigan relates very pretty story of her little boy. whom she