Part 3

In this country gypsum is a great source of wealth, wherever soils are sensible to its effects. It has tended much to equalize the value of lands, by imparting an artificial fertility to those naturally more sterile, and that at a small expense.--But gypsum alone is by no means a sufficient source of dependence as a manure for keeping lands in the improved condition that is necessary for raising the best crops, and of course deriving the greatest profits. The farmer should attend also to making the most of such other manures as come conveniently within his reach. We are, however, no advocate for obtaining manures at any price; they may cost too much; but almost every farmer whose lands are of suitable quality, and who stocks them with as many cattle as he can keep in good order, and then makes the best use of the manure they afford, may usually, with this supply, and with the judicious use of gypsum, added to good culture, keep his lands in an improving condition.

But some soils are so constituted as to be of diminished value without a suitable mixture of other earths than those of which they are composed, and in such case are permanently benefited by such additions of earthy substances. If lands, for instance, are too sandy, or gravelly, the addition of clay to them, or what is better, of upland marle, will permanently improve the soil; and where these earths can be found within reasonable distance it will usually be labour well expended in making such applications. We will state a case in point. In the rear of the city of Albany lies an immense body of calcarious earth, which may properly be called a schistic marle. It is commonly called blue clay. This, when mixed with a due proportion of sand, forms a very fertile and durable soil. Farther west of the city lie large tracts of sandy lands, which require suitable proportions of this marle to render them fit for good culture, and with such additions much of them would be found very valuable. Where they lie sufficiently level, and are not too sandy, it will probably be found that from half a ton to a ton for every rod square would be sufficient to render them very fertile, and fitted for the most profitable rotations of crops.

This sort of marle, which may be found in various parts of the country, and very frequently under tracts of sandy lands, is a very valuable and permanent manure in all dry soils which are deficient of calcarious matter, and have not already too great a proportion of clay in their composition. This manure should be laid on the land as a top dressing, in order that it may be completely pulverized before it is mixed with the soil.

Upland marle is sometimes found of silicious texture, in which case it is good for stiff soils, as well as for others. It is also found of different colours, when combined with argillaceous matter, and of different qualities; that containing most lime or calcarious matter being always the best. Marles of this description are often very valuable in forming a principal ingredient in composts, of which we shall presently speak, and the same may be observed of the superior sorts of this manure found in bog swamps, of which something shall now be said.

This sort of marle is found, at greater or less depths, beneath the surface of many bog swamps, and is of a whitish, a greyish, or a brownish colour. The whitish is the most powerful, having most lime in its composition; the greyish is next in quality. The super stratum is either a bog earth, to wit, vegetable matter totally decomposed; or it is a peaty substance, or vegetable matter in a partial state of decomposition. The bog earth is good manure of itself, and may be used separately, or mixed with the marle; the peaty substance must undergo a further decomposition before it is rendered valuable as a manure, it being then rendered similar to bog earth. These manures when applied to growing crops are somewhat similar in their effects to those of gypsum. They are valuable as top dressings, or for mixing with the soil. Their effects are very powerful on Indian corn, and they are more or less valuable when applied to almost every sort of upland crop, with the exception of wheat, rye, barley, &c. For these they are to be applied to the sward, a suitable time before breaking it up, as has been mentioned in regard to gypsum. It should, however, be observed, that neither decomposed peat, nor bog earth, should be applied to soils which already contain too great a proportion of decomposed vegetable matter.

The condition of clay soils is also permanently improved by mixing a due proportion of sand in them. The most durable and perfect soil is chiefly composed of certain proportions of sand, clay, lime, and vegetable matter in a state of decomposition, and, whenever any soil is destitute of a due proportion of any of these, the addition of such earthy substance can never fail to serve as a manure.

The stony earth called Pyrites, when pulverised by the aid of a proper degree of calcination, is much used; and highly esteemed in Flanders as a top dressing for grass lands, as is mentioned in a communication of the late Chancellor Livingston to the Society for the promotion of the useful arts in this state. We will refer the reader to the 2d vol. published by that Society for the manner of preparing this manure, and the quantity to be used, &c.

Of coal, we shall merely state that, from the results of experiments made by the late Mr. Muhlenburg, (of Penn.) about 40 bushels to the acre of this substance, pulverised in the manner of gypsum, was found a good manure, when applied as a top dressing.

Common salt, pulverised, and applied as a top dressing, at the rate of from two to four bushels to the acre, has, in many instances, powerful effects as a manure. Sea-water is peculiarly adapted for this purpose. Mr. Deane, in his Farmer's Dictionary, mentions an instance where a crop of potatoes, and another of flax, were greatly increased in product by an application of sea-water to them while growing. About a pint of the water was applied to each hill of potatoes, and for the flax crop the water was sprinkled over the ground.

Some trials have been made in this country of using burnt clay as a manure, and its use is recommended, particularly for all dry arable lands, not inclining to clay. The first step in preparation for burning clay, is to have a considerable quantity of this earth dug up in spits, and laid to dry in the sun: when pretty well dried you prepare for burning by raising a little pile of dry wood in the shape of a pyramid, say 4 or 5 feet high;--round this you build up the dried spits of clay, leaving a hole at the bottom, for the entrance of the air, and another at the top for it to pass off. Such, at least, was the method formerly practised in Great Britain, but the modern improvement of retaining the smoke within the mass, agreeably to the plan spoken of by Mr. Cobbett, for burning earth, ought also to be pursued in burning clay. After the fire has been set to the wood you continue digging up fresh clay and piling it around and over the heap, as fast as the fire penetrates the mass, taking care, however, not to pile on so much at once as to extinguish the fire. If there be danger of its becoming extinguished, it may be advisable to make one or more holes in the sides of the heap by running a hole into it. The fresh earth is to be added during pleasure or until a sufficient quantity is burned. After the heap has cooled it is fit for use, either by mixing with the soil as directed by Mr. Cobbett, for applying burnt earth, of which we will next speak.

By a late improvement, earths, other than those of clay, are successfully converted into good manure, by the process of burning. It is effected by retaining the smoke within the mass of earth while in a state of ignition. Mr. Cobbett says he has tried this manure for the ruta-baga crop, and found it as efficacious as barn dung. His manner of preparing it, and which we believe would also be the best method of preparing burnt clay, is as follows:

"I make a circle," says Mr. C. "or an oblong square. I cut sods and build a wall all round three feet thick, and four feet high. I then light a fire in the middle with straw, dry sticks, boughs, or such like matter. I go on making this fire larger and larger, till it extend over the whole bottom of the pit or kiln. I put on roots of trees or any rubbish wood, till there be a good thickness of strong coals. I then put on the _driest_ of the clods that I have ploughed up round about, so as to cover all the fire over. The earth thus put in will burn. You will see the smoke coming out at little places here and there. Put more clods wherever the smoke appears. Keep on thus for a day or two. By this time a great mass of fire will be in the inside. And now you may dig out the clay, or earth, any where round the kiln, and fling it on without ceremony, always taking care to _keep in the smoke_; for, if you suffer that to continue coming out at any one place, a hole will soon be made; the main force of the fire will draw to that hole; a blaze like that of a volcano, will come out, and the fire will be extinguished.

"A very good way is to put your finger into the top of the heap here and there; and if you find the fire _very near_, throw on more earth.--Not _too much at a time_, for that weighs too heavily on the fire, and keeps it back; and, at _first_ will put it partially out. You keep on thus augmenting the kiln, till you get to the top of the walls, and then you may, if you like, raise the walls and still go on. No rain will affect the fire, when once it is become strong.

"The principle is to _keep out air_, whether at the top or the sides, and this you are sure to do, if you _keep in the smoke_. I burnt, this last summer, about thirty wagon loads in one round kiln, and never saw the smoke at all after the first four days. I put in my finger to try whether the fire was near the top; and when I found it approaching, I put on more earth. Never was a kiln more completely burnt.

"Now, this may be done on the skirt of any wood where the matters are all at hand. This mode is far preferable to the _above ground_ burning in _heaps_. Because in the next place, the _smoke escapes there_, which is the finest part of the burnt matter. _Soot_, we know well, is more powerful than ashes, and, soot is composed of the _grossest parts of the smoke_. That which flies out of the chimney is the best part of all.

"In case of a want of wood wherewith to begin the fire, the fire may be lighted precisely as in the case of _paring and burning_. If the kiln be large, the oblong square is the best figure.--About _ten feet wide_, because then a man can fling the earth easily over every part. The mode they pursue in England when there is no _wood_, is to make a sort of building in the kiln with turfs and leave air holes at the corners of the walls, till the fire be well begun. But this is tedious work; and is in this country wholly unnecessary. Care must, however, be taken, that the fire be well lighted. The matter put in _at first_ should be such as is of the lightest description; so that a body of earth on fire may be obtained, before it be too heavily loaded.

"The burning being completed, having got the quantity you want, let the kiln remain. The fire will continue to work, until all is ashes. If you want _use_ the ashes sooner, open the kiln. They will be cold enough to remove in a week."

A practice has long prevailed in Europe of paring and burning soils for the purpose of improving their texture and increasing their fertility. On clay lands, and such as contain too much vegetable matter, we conceive the process might be advisable if not too expensive. Its effect on clays is to destroy the adhesive quality of the soil, as the earth burned becomes rather of a silicious texture; and at the same time the surface is much enriched by the operation. In the other case it is calculated to reduce the redundancy of vegetable matter, as well as to enrich the soil. The operation is performed in the following manner:

When the ground is in a good sward of grass let it be carefully turned over with the plough, the irons of which should be well sharpened. Let the plough run about three inches deep.--Then cross plough with a very sharp coulter, and the sward will all be cut into squares of about 10 or 12 inches. You then proceed to set these square chunks up edgeways, by leaning two together, in which situation they will soon dry.--When well dried build a part of them tip in the form of little ovens, and let this be done at the distance of about every 18 feet each way. These are all to have a little opening or door, at a common windward side, for the air to enter, and another opening above for the smoke to pass off. On some dry day when the wind is fair for blowing into the holes below place some straw or other dry rubbish into the holes and set fire to it. As soon as the fires have got fully going in each of the heaps, let the holes in the tops be stopped up, for the purpose of retaining the smoke, and keep gradually building up the heaps as the fire penetrates them, until all the chunks of earth are piled up round them; and when the heaps have fully burned and sufficiently cooled, they are to be evenly spread over the ground, and ploughed in.

In some parts of Great Britain it has been the practice to burn peat earth, in a manner very similar to that before described for burning clay, and the ashes thus obtained from the mass were used for top dressings; but we believe this practice has mostly given way to that of rotting or decomposing peat in compost, the method of which is as follows: you form the compost heap of about one half of peat, a fourth of lime, and a fourth of barn dung, and these substances are to be separately laid along in a manner most convenient to be afterwards thrown into the compost heap in their proper proportions. You commence at one end with spreading a layer of peat on the ground, say, ten feet square and four inches in depth; then a layer of lime on this and another of barn dung, each two inches thick; then another layer of peat, as before, and then the lime and barn dung, as before, until in this way the heap is raised about four feet high, and let the last layer be of peat: then commence another ten feet square along side of this, and raise it as before, till you raise it to the same height; then with another ten feet square, at the end of this mass, and so on, till the heap is completed. After the heap has stood a while, it will heat, and when the heat begins to subside, you commence again at one end of the heap and cut the whole down to the bottom, with the spade, and form a new heap, throwing the exterior parts of the heap, thus cut down, into the middle of the other. A second heating of the mass will then commence, and when that subsides, the peat will be found sufficiently decomposed, and the whole an excellent mass of manure.

In this country peaty substances are usually to be found in morasses; as the superstratum of marle, as before-mentioned; as the principal ingredient of the salt marshes contiguous to the ocean, and as the superstratum of tracts of cold lands which are covered with growths of evergreen trees.

In making composts with upland marle, before-mentioned, the proportions of the marle, with that of the lime and dung, may be similar to those just mentioned for the peat composts, or perhaps the marle may be in greater proportion. The layers of each may be as before described, but the heap only raised to such height that it may be cleft down to the bottom with the plough, then thrown together in a ridge again with this implement; and let these operations be repeated, at intervals, till the whole becomes well mixed, pulverised, and in a state of fermentation, when it is fit for use, and should be immediately applied to the soil in the manner before-mentioned.

The use of wood ashes as a manure, is well known. It is good for almost all crops, and is to be used as a top dressing. It is much more efficacious as a manure in some parts of the country than others, particularly on Long Island. It is most valuable on light dry soils, particularly those which are sandy. Soot, as a top dressing, is much more valuable than ashes, and is proper for almost all arable lands. It is most efficacious when well pulverised before its application.

The dung of fowls of every sort has much calcareous matter in it, and is very efficacious, applied as top dressings. Malt dust is good in the same way--40 bushels of it is a proper allowance to the acre.

_Night shade_ should be mixed with earth, say, two thirds of the latter to one of the former, and in the course of a few months it forms an excellent manure. In most European cities this excrement is carefully collected, for manure, while in this country its use has been neglected.

Many liquids are furnished from every domicile, and particularly the kitchen, which, mixed with earths, and other substances, would form valuable masses of manure. The liquids to which we principally refer, are the soap-suds, dish-water, brine of meat, urine, &c.; these should all be preserved, by being absorbed in rich earthy substances, together with the contents of the hog-sty; and in this way a large heap of good manure may be made that is commonly lost for want of attention in saving these ingredients.

FROM THE RECORD.

_Agricultural Education._

No cause has more retarded the progress of education in the agricultural part of the community than a mistaken opinion, in regard to the use that can be made of it.--That the advantages of learning, in every state of society, should not be appreciated by the grossly ignorant, is not to be wondered at; but that men well informed on many subjects, should fall into the vulgar error of denying the advantages arising from extensive knowledge is really surprising.

We hear it frequently observed by farmers, who have sons to educate, that they intend such a one to follow his own occupation; and it will be necessary that he should be taught to read, write, and cypher to the "Rule of Three." Now it is believed with these _extensive_ acquirements, a farmer will be able to keep his accounts tolerably decent; to estimate the amount of any number of bushels of grain, at a given sum per bushel: but I shall forbear to mention all the advantages which this kind of knowledge may confer. The intelligent farmer well knows it has a boundary, and a very limited one too. To endeavour by force of reason to induce this class of farmers to abandon their errors, would be time spent to little purpose; their minds are not recipient for truths which lie beyond the narrow boundary of their learning.

It is to the enlightened and public spirited yeomanry of our country, that we are to look for a change in the education of our youth.--Change, did I say? Rather an entire new system of education. I ask this class of farmers if they have any such a thing as an agricultural education among them. I mean an elementary, a systematic one: we train our youth (at school) for the counting-house, and not for the farm. We teach them the mysteries of the _cent per cent_; all the dark intricacies of annuities, all the crooks and turns, and all the advantages of barter, discount and fellowship. While of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Botany, Mineralogy, Geology and other sciences, directly or indirectly connected with agriculture, they remain as ignorant as if they never were to apply any of the principles to practice. Can it then be wondered that agriculture has advanced so little? Ought we not rather to wonder that it has advanced so much as it has, since so little pains are taken to qualify our youth to make improvement in it? As an art it is perhaps more capable of improvement than any other, because the sciences on which it is founded, are more numerous and more extensive in their nature.

By whom are improvements to be made? by men whose knowledge of the art has never deviated from the beaten track which their forefathers had trodden, and this knowledge was bequeathed to them with this condition, "thus far shalt thou go and no farther?" Common sense answers in the negative. Do we expect important improvements in our present systems of agriculture, from men who have been educated merchants or schoolmasters? Their minds cannot be sufficiently interested in such subjects to pursue them either with ardour or with profit. They have never acquired a taste for those studies which would render the different operations of farming a series of philosophical experiments.

In too many instances, farmers' sons, who have been educated as above described, lose all relish for their occupation, and engage in some mercantile business. In many instances they contrive to worry through life without deserting their calling, though they receive little pleasure from any part of it, except counting the money which it yields. The source from which we have received our new systems of farming lay in quite a different quarter. Inhabitants of cities, or men who have been educated for some learned profession, are our teachers in the rules of husbandry. We will suppose these men to be well versed in the sciences above alluded to. But have they ever learned their application to agriculture? If not, as well might they adduce principles on that subject, as a person to attempt solving an abstruse problem in surveying, who has only learned the elements of geometry. When I spoke of an _agricultural education_, I did not confine my views to the sciences above specified. _Practice_ is an indispensable part of this education. The chemist may sit in his laboratory and give us a system of agriculture, stolen from European treatises, and may occasionally sprinkle it with some hard words of his own; but it is only the _practical and scientific farmer_ that can draw from this heterogenous mass, all that is valuable and applicable to his own purpose, and nothing more. The principles he receives from books must be tested by experiment. To make important deductions from these experiments, unwearied patience must be exercised, in order to sift real conclusions from those which are only plausible. Let him not sit down supinely, after having ascertained a rule, for general rules in this science as in most others have their exceptions, and an accurate knowledge of these exceptions will require much time for discernment, and investigation. If agriculture, then, is an art of calling forth all the faculties of the mind, why is it not taught like other arts by a regular and systematic education?

AGRICOLA.

FROM THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER.

_On the Grape Vine, with its wines, brandies, salt, and dried fruits._

No. II.

The object of these papers is to excite to objects of agriculture, manufacture, commerce, and consumption of the utmost importance to the prosperity of our country. The forms and niceties of literary composition will yield their claim to attention to the more solid substance of the pertinent information and suggestions.

In the course of the consideration of this subject, several letters from living friends to our prosperity have been brought together. The remainder of this paper will be appropriated to the publication of one of those letters, of very recent date, from a native of the United States, of the best opportunities, in _Bordeaux_, the emporium of that part of the kingdom of France which gives to us the largest quantities of the most esteemed wines and brandies which enter into our regular consumption. It here follows, in its own clear and instructive terms.