AGRICULTURAL.

Tuapeka Times, Volume V, Issue 222, 2 May 1872, Page 8

AGRICULTURAL.

Decaying animal matter acts best as a manure when composted with stable dung and loam, with plenty of mould to absorb escaping gases. When muck is used in sufficient quantity lime may be mixed in to hasten decomposition. To effect this dig a shallow, pit, arid throw the offal into it in layers, using rotten straw and weeds, or rotten turf, if the odour is -rank, and cover all in with three or four inches of garden earth or forest mould. The principle is that vegetable decay and animal decay neutralise each other, and' convert matters noisome and offensive into the choicest food. Mr. Bradgen says, " I have seen perhaps twenty experiments in the use of animal refuse as applied directly in quantity .to plants and vines, and never witnessed any profitable results. It gives great growth, but it weakens the plant. It is like compelling a man •to eat more than his stomach can bear. " Who would have thought that we should have found an advocate in favor of the much -abused thistle. Strange it is, but true neverthless. Hear what Mr. Macknight, a veteran Victorian farmer, says on the subject: — "It is monstrous that our code of laws should continue to be defaced by a statute framed for the purpose of endeavouring to destroy what is now proved to be a most valuable article of food for most of domestic animals. The thistle is found most useful, both when growing and when preserved, for winter fodder, The Kilmore farmers and many others make large stacks of thistle hay, which possesses singularly nutritious q ualities. The seeds are most fattening food for fowls. The roots are eagerly dug up by pigs. It is rich in potash and oil, both component parts, of the golden fleece. Horses delight in the artichokeflavoured blossom, and will bruise the stem with their hoofs, and eat it when thus crushed." Thuc it ia that modern discoveries are continually upsetting old-world theoeies. A commission of inquiry held some time ago at Wellington recommended the General Assembly to cause to be revoked the Provincial Thistle Ordinances. The difference between renovating crops and exhausting crops should be well understood, and the proportion that should exist between them. Tur- , nips, beets, clover and grass rank as renovating or flesh and dung-mak-ing ; wheat, oats, and' barley are all exhausters. The pride of the best English farmers is not in boasting of their exhaustive crops ; they do not boast of so many bushels of wheat, but of so many tons of meat. The average pro.duct of meat in England is 1381 b. a year to the acre. Holland is a little over this ; but Flanders, a country renowned for model farming, reports but 98lb. per acre. Renovating crops can be produced for ever, with a constant' enriching of the soil ; but exhausting crops such as cereals soon impoverish the best land if persisted in.