No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 369 



soil friendl}'- to plant life. The tendency of all soils is to loose some 

 of their stock of available lime, and when a lime deficiency comes 

 about acids accumulate in the soil that make conditions unfriendly 

 to bacterial life and to our cultivated plants. A large portion of 

 land outside of the limestone belts of Pennsylvania have parted 

 with their available lime to a point where a lime deficiency now ex- 

 ists and this condition is limiting the production of clover and other 

 crops. More than this, within our limestone belts there is a rapidly 

 increasing area of soil which has a lime deficiency. I live in a lime- 

 stone valley at State College, and our scientists find that much of 

 the land on the college farm does not now contain enough lime in 

 available form to keep the soil sweet. The land is becoming acid 

 and requires applications of lime to correct acidity just as truly as 

 does very much of the land outside of the limestone areas of our 

 state. When we first began to turn new land with a breaking-plow 

 doubtless a diminution of the supplies of available lime occurred, 

 and as tho soil was kept loose by means of tillage and crops were 

 taken from the land, the store of lime was gradually reduced by 

 leaching and by removal and by chemical change as acids formed, 

 ami it appears now that it is only a matter of time when practically 

 all soils will reach a point where a lack of available lime will be- 

 come apparent. Some of you have land that produced good clover 

 twenty years ago and is now beginning to refuse to grow clover. 

 Others of you have land that is producing good clover today, but 

 will probably reach the point of lime deficiency and impaired power 

 to grow clover a generation hence. The point which I would em- 

 phasize this evening is that the lime in our soil which is so essential 

 to healthful plant conditions tends to grow less in amount as the 

 years go by. Within our own life-time we have seen a large pro- 

 portion of our tillable lands reach the point of where there was not 

 enough lime to take care of harmful soil acids and as the years come 

 the area of such land will grow greater. This is not a pleasing 

 situation to contemplate, but it is a condition that must be met. 

 There is only one cure for soil acidity and that is to apply something 

 to correct this acidity and to give to the plants friendly soil condi- 

 tions. 



The vital question before tens of thousands of practical farmers 

 today is, what shall be done to restore their soils to a condition 

 friendly to the clovers. Many say that lime costs too much and that 

 its application is unpleasant and they are not fully convinced that 

 it would be profitable. I want to urge that if the soil is growing 

 acid, and if the organic matter is becoming deficient because heavy 

 sods cannot be grown and plowed down, there is no way to bring 

 the land up to high cropping power except to npply the one natural 

 element for the correction of these bad soil conditions, and that is 

 lime. Men who abused the use of lime years ago applied one hun- 

 dred to two hundred bushels per acre. It is not such liming that 

 we are urging on you today. I am not even urging lime to benefit 

 the phj'sical condition of your land, although oftentimes applica- 

 tions for this purpose would pay well, but I am urging that soils be 

 kept sweet and that means the presence of sufiicient available lime 

 to take care of all the harmful acids that tend continually to accum- 

 ulate in land that is deficient in lime. 



24—7—1908. 



