CARBONATE OF LIME. 125 



acids. Rains fall, they leach out lime, plants decay, 

 turn sour, the acid attacks lime, thus year by year 

 th top soil loses more and more its lime and tends 

 to sourness. Once in Lincolnshire I walked down 

 into a chalk pit where a laborer was loading a cart, 

 on the farm of Henry Dudding, of Lincoln sheep and 

 Short-horn cattle fame, and asked the laborer why 

 he dug the chalk. "It be for the dung, sir," was the 

 response. 



"And do you put it on the land?" 



"Ay, and it do make the clovers and the grass 

 grow better, sir, ' ' was the response. This on a farm 

 already buried in rich grass, already having enough 

 lime in its soils so that sheep pasturing on them had 

 bones like calves and cattle stood on legs like straight 

 columns of a temple. 



Rider Haggard in his interesting book, "Bural 

 England," makes frequent reference to lucerne, 

 stating usually that it is grown where the land was 

 chalky and drouthy. On one farm he found them 

 applying a sort of marl that they dug from the sub- 

 soil, this on the farm of Robert Stephenson of Bur- 

 well, Cambridge. I quote : 



He described to me a process which I was not fortunate 

 enough to witness, as in these days of depression it is, I under- 

 stand, but seldom practiced on account of the initial expense, al- 

 though it used to be common enough that of treating fen lands 

 with gault. This gault, a mixture of clay and marl, is dug from 

 the subsoil out of trenches cut ten yards apart, and spread on 

 the surrounding surface to the quantity of about 200 tons to the 

 acre. The land thus treated is said to double its value. The cost 

 of the operation may be put at from $15 to $25 per acre. One 

 application will last from 10 to 12 years, the full benefits being 

 experienced in the second year after treatment. 



