126 Mrs. Ibbetson on the Action of Lime [Aug. 



axioms in agriculture ; viz. " that lime causes the decay of both 

 animal and vegetable matter, thus producing constant food for 

 fresh plants, and by this means nourishing the earth." I placed 

 a piece of veal cut into slices, last summer, in mild lime, and to 

 my great astonishment, it remained five months, two feet under 

 ground, without any smell or moisture, being, when discovered, 

 perfectly sweet. The lime formed a sort of crust around it, which 

 appeared to harden it, and render it impervious to air ; and I 

 doubt not it would have continued, fresh and in the same condi- 

 tion, many months longer, if I had not taken it out. Having 

 thus found by experiment, which has repeatedly been confirmed 

 by subsequent trials with the same results, that lime, instead of 

 destroying animal matters, preserved them, I was inclined to 

 draw the same conclusion with respect to vegetables in general. 

 In April last, I placed in lime a quantity of mutton, not in slices as 

 before, but in one mass, weighing a pound ; and in another 

 trough, in the same sort of lime, I put a quantity of vegetables, 

 weeds as well as boughs of trees, annual and herbaceous plants, 

 with some common heaths, with their hard roots. They remained 

 nearly five months, and were then taken up for inspection. The 

 meat, in spite of the extreme heat from the strong sunshine, to 

 which the trough was in some measure exposed (being in a per- 

 fectly unshaded garden), remains as fresh as it was the first 

 minute it was placed there ; but the vegetables were indeed in a 

 very different state ; the lime lay on theni perfectly loose, not 

 coagulating or forming a crust, as on the meat, but most of them 

 were not only rotted in the bark, but, in many cases, the wood 

 was completely decomposed, and really almost in a state fit to fur- 

 nish nutriment for other plants ; and I doubt not two months 

 more would have reduced them sufficiently for forming new 

 combinations suitable to the nourishment of each separate plant. 

 There is, however, much difference in the manner of their 

 decaying. The oak, the elm, the elder, and the heath, were 

 completely decomposed, the wood in a powder, and black ; 

 while the walnut and hazel nut, which in simple earth were more 

 injured than any other sort of trees, were little touched, and cer- 

 tainly had not been long dead, since they had thrown out new 

 buds, but without any bark to cover them. The plants, however, 

 in general were decayed in a very remarkable degree. That the 

 simple earth should preserve vegetables so completely as to keep 

 them for the most part undecayed, and for the second year so 

 thoroughly alive as to throw out fresh buds, and yet in the lime 

 they should decay so entirely as to decompose the wood and 

 reduce it to a wet powder, when a three years' trial in earth 

 could not even discolour the wood, is a fact not a little curious 

 and useful to agriculture. It would seem also very extraordinary, 

 and contrary to what we should have previously expected, that 

 animal matters can be preserved so perfectly in lime six or eight 



