Stimulated by Pecuchet, he began to rave about pasture. In the pit for
composts were heaped up branches of trees, blood, guts,
feathers--everything that he could find. He used Belgian cordial, Swiss
wash, lye, red herrings, wrack, rags; sent for guano, tried to
manufacture it himself; and, pushing his principles to the farthest
point, he would not suffer even urine or other refuse to be lost. Into
his farmyard were carried carcasses of animals, with which he manured
his lands. Their cut-up carrion strewed the fields. Bouvard smiled in
the midst of this stench. A pump fixed to a dung-cart spattered the
liquid manure over the crops. To those who assumed an air of disgust, he
used to say, "But 'tis gold! 'tis gold!" And he was sorry that he had
not still more manures. Happy the land where natural grottoes are found
full of the excrements of birds!

The colza was thin; the oats only middling; and the corn sold very badly
on account of its smell. A curious circumstance was that La Butte, with
the stones cleared away from it at last, yielded less than before.

He deemed it advisable to renew his material. He bought a Guillaume
scarifier, a Valcourt weeder, an English drill-machine, and the great
swing-plough of Mathieu de Dombasle, but the ploughboy disparaged it.

"Do you learn to use it!"

"Well, do you show me!"

He made an attempt to show, but blundered, and the peasants sneered. He
could never make them obey the command of the bell. He was incessantly
bawling after them, rushing from one place to another, taking down
observations in a note-book, making appointments and forgetting all
about them--and his head was boiling over with industrial speculations.

He got the notion into his head of cultivating the poppy for the purpose
of getting opium from it, and above all the milk-vetch, which he
intended to sell under the name of "family coffee."

Finally, in order to fatten his oxen the more quickly, he blooded them
for an entire fortnight.

He killed none of his pigs, and gorged them with salted oats. The pigsty
soon became too narrow. The animals obstructed the farmyard, broke down
the fences, and went gnawing at everything.

In the hot weather twenty-five sheep began to get spoiled, and shortly
afterwards died. The same week three bulls perished owing to Bouvard's
blood-lettings.

In order to destroy the maggots, he thought of shutting up the fowls in
a hencoop on rollers, which two men had to push along behi