Animal Maters, without any exception, are beneficial as manures, for they all yield during putrefaction gases and soluble substances that are imbibed greedily by the roots of plants. That this is the case affords no cause for wonder, because animal matters and vegetable matters are alike compounded of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, with a small addition of saline matters. The general consideration of Manures will be found under that title, and other relative information under the heads Dung and Vegetable Matters, and in this place I shall confine my attention to some of the most available of strictly animal matters. See also the article Bones.

Blubber, or fat of the whale, contains train oil, composed of Carbon .... 68.87 Hydrogen .... 16.10 Oxygen .... 15.03 with a little animal skin and muscle. Forty gallons of train oil, mixed with 120 bushels of screened soil, grew twenty-three tons of turnips per acre, on a soil where forty bushels of bones broken small, and eighty bushels of burnt earth, produced only twenty-one tons.

Fish generally, such as sprats, herrings, pilchards, five-fingers, and shellfish, owe their powerful fertilizing qualities not only to the oil they contain, but also to the phosphate of lime in their bones. From twenty-five to forty-five bushels per acre are the extreme quantities to be applied broad-cast, but if in the drills, with the crop sixteen bushels are ample. They are beneficial to all the gardener's crops, but especially to asparagus, parsnips, carrots, beets, onions, and beans. Shell-fish should be broken before being applied.

Blood is a very rich manure, and has been used with especial benefit to vines, and other fruit trees. The blood of the ox contains about eighty per cent. of water, and twenty per cent. solid matter. The latter contains in 100 parts when dried, Carbon .... 51.950 Hydrogen . . . 7.165 Azote . . . . 17.172 Oxygen. . . . 19.295 Ashes .... 4.418 The ashes contain various salts, as chloride of sodium, (common suit.) phosphate of lime, with a little oxide of iron. Sugar-baker's skimmings owe their chief fertilizing qualities to the blood used in clarifying the sugar, and which is combined with vegetable albumen and extractive.

Woollen Rags, cut into very small pieces,are a good manure, decomposing slowly, and benefiting the second as much as the first crop. Hops and turnips have been the crops to which they have been chiefly applied. Half a ton per acre is a fair dressing. Wool is composed of:

It leaves a very slight ash, containing minute quantities of muriate of potash, lime, and probably phosphate of lime. Feathers and hair closely resemble it in their components. Horns are composed of:

Besides minute proportions of sulphate, muriate and phosphate of potash, phosphate of lime, and other less important matters.

Shells

Those of the following fish are thus composed: -

They have all been found good in a pounded form, as manures for turnips; and must be for all other plants, and on all soils where calcareous matters are deficient. For more extensive notices of these and similar manures, the reader is referred to a useful work, recently published in this country, "The Eco-nomv of Waste Manures".