kind of brick, and is then perfectly useless. When the burning is rightly managed, the clay is converted into a blackish kind of ashes, and this is the thing to be aimed at.

The quantity of the ashes to be applied to arable lands is from forty to fifty loads to the acre, and on grass lands from twenty to thirty loads per acre. The ashes are usually carted on after harvest upon clover leys, stubbles, or fallows. Upon grass lands they may be laid on at any time most convenient.

Burnt clay may be used to form a compost with earth, sand, marl, or other manures; and in this way it will be found highly beneficial as a top-dressing, and in lightening the texture and improving the condition of stiff heavy lands.

Bones, constitute a manure, than which none can be more advantageously employed for raising turnips. When broken or ground into dust and drill, and used in equal proportions, it ensures an early and weighty crop. From twenty-five to thirty bushels per statute acre, is the quantity usually required for drill-sowing, which is generally, if not always, to be preferred to broadcast.

Bone manure is at once stimulating and nutritive, and very durable in its effects. When broken into pieces of about an inch in size, it will be three or four years before these are entirely decomposed in the soil, and they will continue to throw off coats of calcareous matter promoting vegetation. When the bones are bruised, or broken small, or ground into powder, the effect is of course more immediate.

The finest vetches, and a crop of wheat afterwards, have been produced from a dressing of bruised bones of twenty-five bushels to the acre. It is, as before

stated, an excellent manure for a turnip crop. It may be laid on and covered in at the last ploughing, whether the turnip-seed be drilled or sown broadcast, though the drill is always to be preferred. It is well suited to dry land and light sandy soil, and is also ex

tremely beneficial to grass land, when the bones are bruised small, or reduced to powder.

If the turnip-crop raised with bone manure be not eaten off by sheep, the land will require to be manured when sown in spring; but if it be sheep fed, it will be fit for a grain crop without manure.

Rape Dust, Meal Dust, and Malt Dust, are each of them highly fertilizing manures. They are very stimulating, as well as nutritious, and for that reason are especially beneficial in turnip culture. Their portability, moreover, often renders these manures of great convenience and value to the farmer. From fifteen to twenty cwt. of either is sufficient for an acre. Rape dust drilled with autumn-sown wheat, at the rate of four to five cwt. per acre, has been found to answer well, and give an abundant crop.

Guano, is a substance which has been recently imported and used as a manure. It is composed of the excrements of the sea-fowl which frequent the islands on the coast of Chili and Peru, and is admirably fitted for use as manure, as it contains ammoniacal salts in great abundance, as well as other constituents essential to vegetation. It has been extensively used by the Peruvians since the 12th century, and the sterile soils of the South American coast are by its application made to yield luxuriant crops.

There can be no question as to the fertilizing qualities of the guano, and if it can be obtained in such quantities, and at such a price, as to make it available for the general purposes of agriculture in this country, it will become highly useful to the farmer. It has been used successfully with turnips at the rate of three cwt. per acre, harrowed in with the seed sown broadcast; and it seems, on the whole, to be better calculated for green, than for corn crops.

The quantity of this substance on the islands whence

it is brought, is stated to be enormous. It is the accumulation of ages, and the sea-birds by whom it has been there deposited, are so numerous, that when they rise from their resting-places in the morning in flocks of miles in length, they are said to completely cloud the sun. Guano is the dung of these birds, and like pigeon's dung, it is a highly stimulating manure; but the circumstance of the sea-birds feeding on fish, may possibly impart to their dung a fertilizing quality beyond that of the dung obtained from the dovecot.

There are several new manures now artificially prepared, such as the sulphates and nitrates of soda and ammonia, and others having the names of their inventors given to them, and new ones are still occasionally added to the list; but it is unnecessary to notice any of these, until the test of experience has proved and established their efficacy.

Liquid Manure.-Urine has long been used as a manure by the farmers of Switzerland, Belgium, and Holland, who, with inferior means, are enabled, chiefly by the proper management of this article, to compete with the best of our farming establishments.

In the Flemish farm, all the cattle are kept and fed within doors, and the urine is collected into vaults of brickwork, which correspond in size with the extent of the farm and stock. Age and fermentation are found to add to the efficacy of this liquid as a manure, and the best constructed cisterns are divided by a partition, with a valve to admit the contents of the first space into the second, where it remains until ready for use. So sensible are the Flemings of the value of liquid manure, that after the farm-yard dung has ceased fermenting, they frequently throw water upon it, and the drainings and washings of the manure are alone carried to the field.

Cattle fed upon turnips, will each yield about twothirds of the weight of the turnips in urine, or about a

gallon for every twelve pounds; and it has been calculated, that the urine of three cows will enrich a quantity of earth sufficient to top-dress an acre of grass land. It has also been proved by experiment, that the urine of a moderate-sized person amounts on an average to about half a gallon per day, which, by a similar mode of application, would be sufficient to manure half an acre of ground every year.

Urine of every kind, when properly diluted with water, is highly nourishing for plants. Sir Humphry Davy considered that "it contains the essentialˇelements of vegetables in a state of solution." Any method by which liquid manure can be saved deserves attention, and the careful landlord will urge and assist his tenantry in the construction of tanks and cisterns for the purpose.

The water in which flax is steeped becomes rich in fertilizing qualities, and should never be allowed to run to waste; but it ought to be carefully preserved, and applied to the land either in its liquid state, or else by mixing it with earth, peat, or other compost, which would perhaps be generally found the best mode of applying it. The fertilizing effects of flax-water are shown by the growth and colour of the grass where flax has been spread to dry. We have seen a most luxuriant crop of oats upon land manured with flaxwater. If this valuable manure were always carefully preserved, and its application properly attended to, the complaint that a flax crop impoverishes the soil would not be made.

Liquid manure is no less valuable for the garden than the field. The Chinese apply liquid manure to their fruit-trees, as contributing much to their growth and vigour; and in that country it is sold in the streets, for the purposes of garden culture, in quantities so small as an English pint.

Liquid manure is highly beneficial to strawberries, and to gooseberry and currant trees, when applied immediately before the breaking of the bud in spring. It makes potatoes, whether early or late, large in size and very productive. The most efficacious time for ap÷

plying it is in the drills, immediately before or after the brairding of the plants. The young shoots rapidly imbibe the nourishment, which makes the stems and tubers very luxuriant, and they require no other manure. To the cabbage and colewort tribe it is equally valuable. We wish earnestly to impress upon every cultivator of the soil, that it is very important for his own interest, to collect this valuable description of manure by every means in his power.

The night-soil of Paris is now formed into cakes, with a mixture of lime and ashes, and in this shape is exported to Flanders and the Low Countries; where, after being dissolved and converted into a liquid manure, it is extensively used, and is found to be particularly valuable as a top-dressing for grass lands. If the nightsoil and urine now permitted to run to waste in London and our great towns, were collected and applied to the renovation of the soil, what an inexhaustible supply of fertilizing matter of the most valuable description would thereby become available for the purposes of agriculture! and there seems to be no good reason why this should not be done.

SPADE-DIGGING AND TRENCHING.

With certain kinds of soil, and in certain situations and circumstances, the spade may be profitably employed as an instrument of tillage: it may also be used with advantage for breaking in and reclaiming rough waste lands: but in all cases where the extent of cultivation is considerable, the plough must be resorted to.

In this variable climate, the process of tillage requires, in most cases, to be expeditious; and horse labour with the plough, by which a large amount of work may be done rapidly, is therefore indispensable, as well on this account, as with reference to its superior economy. To turn over an acre per day, is considered fair work for a pair of horses with the plough; but to dig the same quantity of land with the spade, would oc