"We find it is best to mix the fish in the summer and not use the compost until the next spring and summer. Yet we are obliged to use in September for our winter rye a great deal of the compost made in July. We usually compost the first arrivals of fish in June for our winter grain; after this pile has stood three or four weeks, it is worked over thoroughly. In this space of time the fish become pretty well decomposed, though they still preserve their form and smell outrageously. As the pile is worked over, a sprinkling of muck or plaster is given to retain any escaping ammonia. At the time of use in September the fish have completely disappeared, bones and fins excepted." "The effect on the muck is to blacken it and make it more loose and crumbly. As to the results of the use of this compost, we find them in the highest degree satisfactory. We have raised 30 to 35 bushels of rye per acre on land that without it could have yielded 6 or 8 bushels at the utmost. This year we have corn that will give 60 to 70 bushels per acre, that otherwise would yield but 20 to 25 bushels. It makes large potatoes, excellent turnips and carrots." Fish compost thus prepared, is a uniform mass of fishy but not putrefactive odor, not disagreeable to handle. It retains perfectly all the fertilizing power of the fish. Lands, manured with this compost, will keep in heart and improve: while, as is well known to our coast farmers, the use of fish alone is ruinous in the end, on light soils. It is obvious that _any other easily decomposing animal matters, as slaughter-house offal, soap boiler's scraps, glue waste, horn shavings, shoddy, castor pummace, cotton seed-meal, etc., etc._, may be composted in a similar manner, and that several or all these substances may be made together into one compost. In case of the composts with yard manure, guano and other animal matters, the alkali, _ammonia_, formed in the fermentation, greatly promotes chemical change, and it would appear that this substance, on some accounts, excels all others in its efficacy. The other alkaline bodies, _potash_, _soda_ and _lime_, are however scarcely less active in this respect, and being at the same time, of themselves, useful fertilizers, they also may be employed in preparing muck composts. _Potash-lye_ and _soda-ash_ have been recommended for composting with muck; but, although they are no doubt highly efficacious, they are too costly for extended use. The other alkaline materials that may be cheaply employed, and are recommended, are _wood-ashes_, leached and unleached, _ashes of peat_, _shell marl_, (consisting of carbonate of lime,) _quick lime_, _gas lime_, and what is called "_salt and lime mixture_."