266 HANDY-BOOK OF HUSBANDRY, 



' among the particles of earth, consumes away the humus, com- 

 ' bines with the black and styptic iron protoxide, burning it to red 

 ' and innocuous peroxide, literally as well as figuratively warms 

 ' the soil, and sets up those inorganic activities that must always 

 ' precede and prepare for the sway of organic life. 



" Lime has long been known as a substitute for drainage. 

 ' Even level-lying clays have been made friable and dry by heavy 

 ' liming. In the Ober-Lausitz, (Germany,) in the north of Eng- 

 ' land and Scotland, this effect has been abundantly seen. Lord 

 ' Karnes noticed, seventy years ago, that some soils are rendered 

 ' so loose by overdoses of lime as to retain no water. This is 

 ' especially the case with their moorish soils and reclaimed peat. 

 ' Such land becomes pufFy and hollow to the tread when limed too 

 ' copiously. If soil or pulverized rocks, like porphyry and 

 ' basalt, are mixed with one per cent, of quicklime, or two per 

 ' cent, of c&rbonate of hme, (air-slacked lime,) then moistened 

 ' with water and set aside for some months in a closed bottle, it 

 ' will be seen by the eye that a very perceptible change of bulk 

 ' has taken place in the mixture. The rock or soil becomes 

 ' more voluminous and more porous by this treatment. 



" The effect of lime in loosening the soil is partly the result 

 ' of chemical action, whereby particle after particle is detached 

 ' from each grain of firm stone, the volume of the whole in- 

 ' creasing, just as the bulk of an ounce of iron is made more by 

 ' cutting it to filings, or that of a rag of linen by tearing it to 

 ' lint. 



"The effect is also in part mechanical, especially in clay, 

 ' whose plastic particles adhere together when the mass is swol- 

 ' len with wet, and, on slow drying, still cohere and harden to 

 ' clods. When clay is limed, the lime, being dissolved in rain, 

 ' is carried wherever the rain penetrates, and coats the fine 

 ' grains of clay as the atoms of a dye fix themselves upon the 

 ' fiber of cloth, so that, when the water wastes, it is not any 

 ' longer adhesive clay settling to a doughy paste, but clay rolled 

 ' in lime, that no more sticks together than bread-dough sticks to 

 ' the pan or fingers dusted with flour. Clays that naturally con- 



