“Lime should never be applied with seed. Mere contact with it would burn the young shoots. Neither should it be mixed with manure before it is used, since the immediate result would be a total loss of great quantities of ammonia, thrown off in gaseous form; and ammonia, as I have explained, is one of the richest of fertilizers. Lime and manure, therefore, should be used separately. “Soils rich in turf, clay, or granite are the ones on which lime acts most beneficially. Because of the important results attained by the use of lime, its manufacture for purely agricultural purposes by certain expeditious and effective methods is customary in many places. Thus in Mayenne, where this application of lime has converted tracts of uncultivated clayey land into rich pastures or into wheat fields of exceptional fertility, lime is made in enormous kilns a dozen meters high and supported by the cliff that furnishes the limestone and sometimes the fuel also. “All animal matter makes excellent fertilizer. Of this class are old woolen rags, stray bits of leather, fragments of horn, dried blood from slaughter-houses, and flesh not fit for human consumption. All these substances are rich in nitrogen and phosphates, and if mixed with farm manure they add greatly to its value. Lime furnishes us the means of utilizing one of these substances, flesh, in the best way possible. “Dead bodies of animals, heedlessly left for dogs and crows and magpies to devour, should be cut up in pieces and then buried with a mixture of earth and quicklime. This attacks the flesh and quickly decomposes it, so that in a few months’ time there would be available a deposit of the most powerful fertilizer instead of a useless, disease-breeding carcass. As to the bones, resistant to the action of lime, they are burned to render them more friable, and then reduced to powder. This bone-dust, mixed with the fertilizer furnished by the decayed flesh, will contribute to grain-field or pasture a rich supply of phosphorus. To uses of this sort the farmer should put all horses and mules that have had to be killed, as well as all large farm animals that have died of disease.” CHAPTER XI PLASTER OF PARIS “Though less important than lime, plaster of Paris is nevertheless much used in building, especially for ceilings, molded chimney-pieces, and in the filling of cracks and cavities. It is a white powder which is made into a paste by adding water, prepared a little at a time and only as fast as needed.” “I’ve seen them do it,” Emile interposed; “the workman takes a few handfuls of that powder out of a bag, and then he mixes it with a little water in his trough with a trowel. He scrapes the paste all together in his hand and uses it immediately, before making any more. Why don’t they mix all the plaster at once, as they do with lime when they make mortar?”