MANURES. 39 



the soil. But when they are remote, the peat may be burn- 

 ed at a trifling cost, and the ashes applied with manifest 

 profit. The principal use hitherto made of them by farmers, 

 has been in spreading them directly over the surface of tho 

 reclaimed bed from which they were taken. 



LIME. 



LIME is the product of limestone, marble, chalk, or marl, 

 after it has been burned, or subjected to an intense heat. In 

 either of the foregoing forms, it is a carbonate, and contains 

 from 43 to 46 per cent, of its weight of carbonic acid, which 

 is expelled by calcination. After the acid has been driven 

 off, it exists in its quick or caustic state ; and in that condi- 

 tion, its affinity for moisture and carbon is so great, that it 

 greedily combines with both, on exposure to water, earth, or 

 even to the atmosphere, passing again into a carbonate and 

 hydrate. It is in these latter conditions, that it is applied to 

 soils and muck heaps. If reduced to an impalpable powder, 

 (the condition in which chalks and marls generally exist,) 

 limestone would act with equal efficiency as if burnt. 



Lime, next to ashes, either as a carbonate or sulphate, has 

 been instrumental in the improvement of our soils, beyond 

 any other saline manures. Like ashes, too, its application is 

 beneficial to every soil, not already sufficiently charged 

 with it. It makes heavy land lighter, and light land hea- 

 vier ; it gives adhesiveness to creeping sands or leachy 

 gravel, and comparative openness and porosity to tenacious 

 clays ; and it has a permanently beneficial effect, where 

 generally used, in disinfecting the atmosphere of any noxious 

 vapors existing in it. It not only condenses and retains the 

 volatile gases brought into contact with it by the air and 

 rains, but it has the further effect, of converting the insoluble 

 matters in the soil, into available food for plants. It has 

 proved, in many instances, the wand of Midas, changing 

 everything it touched into gold. It is the key to the strong 

 box of the farmer, securely locking up his treasure till de- 

 manded for his own use, and yielding it profusely to his de- 

 mands whenever required. In its influence in drying the 

 land, and accelerating the growth of plants, the use of lime is 

 equivalent to an increase of temperature ; and the farmer 

 sometimes experiences in effect, the same benefit from it, as 

 if his land were removed a degree or two to the south. 

 The influence of lime in resuscitating soils after they have 

 been exhausted, has been frequent and striking ; and it may 



