ves, and some of my neighbors criticised me severely for doing
so. It is not considered an orthodox practice. I do not advocate selling
straw as a rule; but, if you have more than you can use to advantage,
and it is bringing a good price, sell part of the straw and buy bran,
oil-cake, etc., with the money. To feed nothing but straw to stock is
poor economy; and to rot it down for manure is no better. Straw itself
is not worth $3.00 a ton for manure; and as one ton of straw, spread in
an open yard to rot, will make, in spring, about four tons of so-called
manure, and if it costs 50 cents a ton to draw out and spread it, the
straw, even at this comparatively high estimate of its value, nets you,
when fed out alone, or rotted down, only $1.00 a ton.

I had about 30 tons of straw. Fed out alone or rotted down it would make
120 tons of manure. After deducting the expense of hauling, and
spreading, it nets me on the land, $30. Now sell half the straw for
$150, and buy three tons of oil-cake to feed out with the other half,
and you would have about seventy tons of manure. The manure from the
fifteen tons of straw is worth, say $45, and from the three tons of
oil-cake, $60, or $105. It will cost $35 to draw and spread it, and will
thus net on the land, $70. So far as the manure question is concerned,
therefore, it is far better to sell half your straw, and buy oil-cake
with the money, than to feed it out alone--and I think it is also far
better for the stock. Of course, it would be better for the farm, not to
sell any of the straw, and to buy six tons of oil-cake to feed out with
it; but those of us who are short of capital, must be content to bring
up our land by slow degrees.

"I am at a loss to understand," wrote Mr. Geddes, "what you mean, when
you say that a ton of straw will make, in the spring of the year, four
tons of so-called manure. If you had said that four tons of straw would
make one ton of manure, I should have thought nothing of it. But how you
can turn one ton of straw into four tons of anything that anybody will
call manure, I do not see. In a conversation I had with Hon. Lewis F.
Allen, of Black Rock, more than a year ago, he told me that he had
enquired of the man who furnished hay for feeding cattle at the Central
Yards, in Buffalo, as to the loads of manure he sold, and though I can
not now say the exact quantity to a ton of hay, I remember that it was
very little--far less than I had before supposed. Pl