gly, any or all of
them may be employed together.

The muck should be as fine and free from lumps as possible, and must be
intimately mixed with the other ingredients by shoveling over. The mass
is then thrown up into a compact heap, which may be four feet high. When
the heap is formed, it is well to pour on as much water as the mass will
absorb, (this may be omitted if the muck is already quite moist,) and
finally the whole is covered over with a few inches of pure muck, so as
to retain moisture and heat. If the heap is put up in the Spring, it may
stand undisturbed for one or two months, when it is well to shovel it
over and mix it thoroughly. It should then be built up again, covered
with fresh muck, and allowed to stand as before until thoroughly
decomposed. The time required for this purpose varies with the kind of
muck, and the quality of the other material used. The weather and
thoroughness of intermixture of the ingredients also materially affect
the rapidity of decomposition. In all cases five or six months of summer
weather is a sufficient time to fit these composts for application to
the soil.

Mr. Stanwood of Colebrook, Conn., says: "I have found a compost made of
two bushels of unleached ashes to twenty-five of muck, superior to
stable manure as a top-dressing for grass, on a warm, dry soil."

N. Hart, Jr., of West Cornwall, Conn., states: "I have mixed 25 bushels
of ashes with the same number of loads of muck, and applied it to 3/4 of
an acre. The result was far beyond that obtained by applying 300 lbs.
best guano to the same piece."

The use of "_salt and lime mixture_" is so strongly recommended, that a
few words may be devoted to its consideration.

When quick-lime is slaked with a brine of common salt (chloride of
sodium), there are formed by double decomposition, small portions of
caustic soda and chloride of calcium, which dissolve in the liquid. If
the solution stand awhile, carbonic acid is absorbed from the air,
forming carbonate of soda: but carbonate of soda and chloride of calcium
instantly exchange their ingredients, forming insoluble carbonate of
lime and reproducing common salt.

When the fresh mixture of quick-lime and salt is incorporated with _any
porous body_, as soil or peat, then, as Graham has shown, _unequal
diffusion_ of the caustic soda and chloride of calcium occurs from the
point where they are formed, through the moist porous mass, and the
result is, that the small portio