280 On Liming Land. 
see it recommended, to plough or harrow in the grain 
and lime together. I have never approved of dunging 
the ground at the time of liming ; having made compa- 
rative experiments. My course has been, to lime,— 
take a summer crop,—fall-plough,—and, the next year, 
an open fallow, ora covering, but inexhausting, spring- 
crop, preparatory to dunging for wheat. In this course 
I have invariably had success; and. therefore prefer it 
to any other. I have, when the field came in course 
again (in three or four years) limed ; and thus repeated 
the applications to 120, and in one field, to 160 bushels 
to the acre; including all repetitions of liming, at dif- 
ferent, and distant, periods. I have known 80 bushels 
to the acre (put on, at once, on such land as mine) in- 
a gigantic plant requiring large supplies, will thrive on all the 
food that lime can furnish or prepare. 
When I began to lime (45 years ago) I had no practical 
instructor ; for it was a novelty in my neighbourhood. I 
have lost whole fields of wheat on limed lands sown the first 
season of liming, in a few days after the deceptious verdure 
of the plant had induced me to count on a plentiful crop. 
The same fields produced clover in abundance: In theirnext 
turn for wheat (and especially if assisted by a light dunging) 
they amply retributed. my former disappomtment. My suc~ 
cess was much increased after I used plaister on the clover 
crops ; which ameliorated the soil, and furnished vegetable 
matter for the lime. A moderate liming, (say 30 to 40 
bushels to the acre) harrowed in on fall ploughed ground, 
and laying exposed through the winter, will part with most of 
its caustic qualities, and do with dung the succeeding spring, 
or autumn. But it would be much better to intermit wheat, 
for another year. 
