St. Landry democrat., 1886-10-02
ARTIFICIAL MANURES.
How to improved the Condition of Land
and to Restore Its Fertility.

means must be pronounced acceptable
which puts the farmer position to pro-
vide his fields with more liberal dress
ing than he is able to give them from
his own supply of home-produced
natural manure.
Whoever seeks to arrive quickly at
this state of cultivation must make ex-
tensive use of those auxiliary or artiti-
cial manures that are now offered HIM
by commerce.
As long as these powerful agents for
increasing the productivencss of land
were unknown, an advanta geous alter
nation of crops was indeed the only
means of insuring large yield from the
farm, and this leads slowly yet surely
to the results; now. on the contrary, it
is in the farmers power, by buying ad-
dtlonal manures, to attain his object
with far greater rapidity. The more ex-
tended employment of artificial manures
is an advance in farming that has
already opened up new era. By this
means the business of farmer is be-
coming more closely approximated than
formerly to that of a manufacturer; for
while formerly our farming arrange
ments were conducted in the manner
which the quantity of manure produced
on the farm itself prescribed, we are
now free to cultivate, as may seem most
profitable, every plant which is adapted
to the soil. Yes, still more; we can
produce, as it were, with single effort,
tine harvests from WORKOUT and poorly
MANFRED land; we can, in such case,
secure in two or three years the same
results for which formerly ten or twelve
years were required. The farmer should
avail himself of artificial manures; D
To render land more speedily productive;
(2) to improve quickly the condition
Of land already much exhausted; (3) to
raise the fertile land to the maximum
of productiveness in general attainable,
or, what is the same thing, to make the
occupation of farming as intensive as
possible; ca to be able to command I'M
lnterruptedly the most profitable rota-
lion of crops in a pecuniary point of
view; (5) to strengthen and reinvig-
orate poor and backward sowings, or
such as have been hurt by the severity
of the winter; (6) to obtain in the
shortest possible time more abundant
production of animal manure. The last
observation will especially comfort those
farmers who have hitherto imagined
that artificial are about to supplant nat
ural manures, supposition which will
of course be seen to be untenable when
it is considered that the former, when
they have rendered proper service, will
rather displace themselves and make
their employment uncalled for For if,
by the agency Of artificial manures,
fields are speedily brought into a state
of greater productiveness more straw
and fodder will also be produced, and
by their assistance the stock can be so
increased and the supply of natural
manure so enlarged that the use of arti-
ticial manure is no longer necessary.
Whoever is now contented with the har-
vest which half-exhausted or but par
taRy MANFRED field produces surrenders
of his own free will the full income de-
rivable from his land. The farmer, it
IS true, requires larger capital to carry
on his business than in the usual mode
of farming, but when the money which
he invests in the land is soon and surely
returned to him, with abundant interest,
it is then, indeed, most advantageously
employed.
How do these manures produce their
effect? For what kind of soil and for
what kind of crop are they especially
adopted?
This is learned by reducing them &C
curately into their separate constituents
and by subsequently comparing these
constituents with those of the plants to
which they are proposed to be applied
as fertilizing agents. In the exccements
and urine of those domestic animals
which produce the ordinary stall manure
the farmer finds all the elements united
that plants in cultivation require for
their nourishment; hence he rightly re-
CARDS them as universal manure.
1t is otherwise with artificial manures,
whose constituents are extremely vari-
GUS, and in which are seldom found all
the substances necessary for the food of
plants, but, as a general rule, only
few individual ingredients.
Hence the farmer should not regard
them as representatives or substitutes
for stable manure, but rather as supple
mentary and accessory agents, by
which he is enabled to heighten and in
crease the power of the latter.
Every practical farmer is aware that
he can not supp1ant stall manure by
lime, gypsum, manuring salts, ashes
and the like, but may probably
its action; so, too, precisely
with most artificial manures; and it
must accordingly be of great impor-
lance to the farmer, if he does not wish
to make experiments at random, and
thereby sustain considerable loss, to
know beforehand the principal constit-