88 THE SOIL. 



will be by any manure that may be applied and by the 

 vital power of the growing plants, supplies new materials 

 for their food. 



A clayey soil is always greatly improved by deep drain 

 ing. 



297. A limestone or Calcareous Soil, in which there is a 

 deficiency of sand or of clay, may be amended by the 

 application of each, according to the means within reach. 

 A valuable addition to a calcareous soil is the sandy mud 

 found in the bed of a stream, which may often be easily 

 obtained in the dryest part of summer. 



298. A fourth kind of soil, naturally unproductive of 

 valuable plants, is that of marshes and swamps. Unpro 

 ductive as such soils are, they are mines of vegetable 

 wealth, as they always contain an abundance of substance 

 produced by the decay of vegetable and animal matters, 

 of the richest humus. 



They are to be wisely husbanded. They often contain, 

 in a single acre, enough of the organic elements of fer 

 tility to convert forty acres of hungry, barren land into 

 fertile soil. This mine should not be covered over and 

 lost, as it often is, by burying it under a coat of sand. 

 If a farmer has many acres of swamp or marsh, he may 

 bring a portion of it into immediate fertility by an 

 exchange with the dry and sandy hills of the neighbor 

 hood, a load of sand for the surface of the swamp for a 

 load of muck for the surface of the hill, but he ought 

 to leave always a part of his mine accessible, at every 

 season of the year, and continue to draw from it as long 

 as he has an acre of poor sandy land left. 



:M ( .i. The soil formed from the swamp, by draining and 

 cove riii 1 .! with sand, may be, greatly benefited by the 

 application oi lime, gua.no and other heating manures. 



