THE FARMERS' REGISTER. 



487 



purposes, from its position, mass and exposition, is 

 Shell Bluff on the Savannah river. It rises ab- 

 ruptly Irom the edge of the river, (ami is about 

 25 miles below Augusta, on the Georgia side.) 

 The height judged lo be above fitTy lieet. In a 

 section which I made of the blurt' near 16 or 17 

 years ago, I divided the calcareous mass into 11 

 parts or° portions, one resting upon the other, the 

 whole being covered with a red earth, usually 

 sandy, and which is common to most of the sea- 

 board portion ofihe states south oCihe Chesapeake. 

 Specimens Irom each of these 14 divisions were 

 examined for that part only combined with car- 

 bonic acid, the impurities being considered of no 

 practical moment; and from posii ion and some 

 slight examination, the part combined with the 

 acfd is believed to be lime, and lime only. The 

 results probably may be of advantage to some ol 

 the readers of your Register and they are given, 

 having never been published. 

 No. 1. Commencing at the water line, two spe- 

 cimens, one Irom the lower part gave 

 Carbonate of lime - - - - 

 Sand and argile . . - - 

 The other from the upper part 



Carbonate of lime - - - - 

 Liirht yellow argilo very plastic - 

 No. 2. Mass of comminuted shells : 

 Carbonate of lime - - - - 

 Argile and some course sand (transpa- 

 rent) 



47.2 

 52.8 



71.6 



28.4 



73.2 



26.8 



No. 3. Similar mass (with disintegrated shells • 



732 



26.8 



Carbonate of lime . - - - 62.4 



Coarse silicious sand and yellow clay 87.6 

 No. 4. Similar mass: 



Carbonate of lime 



Coarse sand and yellow argile 

 No. 5. Bed about 6 inches thick, distiudly 



observed in the blurt : 



Carbonate of lime _ . . - 37.2 



Light olive colored argile and fine and 



coarse sand - - - " - 62.8 

 No. 6. Comminuted shells, &c., and occasionally 



an entire one : 



Carbonate of lime . - - - 



Glassy sand and yellow argile - 

 No, 7. The same : 



Carbonate of lime . - - - 



Glassy sand and yellow argile - 

 No. 8. The same. More arenaceous : 



Carbonate of lime - - - - 



Glassy sand and ochery argile - 

 No. 9. Earthy or marly : 



Carbonate of lime - - - - 



Same kind of sand, argile or clay 

 No. 10. Very thick bed : 



Carbonate of lime - - - - 



Glassy sand and whitish argile 

 No. 11. In nodules and large flat masses : 



Carbonate of lime - 



Yellowish white argile 

 No. 12. Comminuted shells, &c., with 



sionally a large oyster : 



Carbonate of lime - - - - 



Coarse sand and yellow argile, veiy 

 tenacious """"." 

 No. 13. Abounds in impressions of tertiary shells 



but the shelly part remained : 



Carbonate of lime - - - - 77.6 



Ferruginous argile, very soft - - 22.4 

 No. 14. Upper part of the calcareous bluff 



47.2 

 52.8 



So.2 

 14.8 



54 4 

 45.6 



80.4 

 19.6 



64.4 

 35.4 



93.4 



76 



occa- 



83.2 



16.8 



abounds in large ostrea which are collected and 

 burnt for lime. Bed about 6 feet thick. I did 

 not analyze their matrix, but have no reason to 

 believe that it varies from those immediately be- 

 low it. 



Having given you as much information as I 

 have at hand, in relation to the " eolt calcareous 

 reo'ion," and believing it to be to the purpose lor 

 which you write, i will now pass to the next item of 

 your letter, namely, the supposed chalk hills, near 

 Hamburg, in South Carolina. This chalk is a 

 remarkably pure clay, as to color and composition, 

 lor its position and mass, and is found at intervals 

 from Long Island to Florida, but usually associ- 

 ated with red clay, forms the mass which you may 

 have seen at Fort Washington on the Potomac. 

 It is in greater body, and a finer white, between 

 Columbia and Augusta, than I have elsewhere 

 noticed it. It would be a porcelain earth were it 

 not lor a yellow tinge which it exhibits when 

 burnt, owing lo oxide ol iron, from which it re- 

 quires only to be free to rank with that substance. 

 Through the region where it exists, its hillocks 

 are called chalk hills. It occurs always near the 

 line of the primary range going Irom the ocean, 

 and appears to have been derived from the decom- 

 position of the feldspar of the granite, which 

 Irom Virginia south is the prevailing seaboard 

 primary rock. To the south the clay is usually 

 covered with a red ferruginous earth, with coarse 

 sand, which is an abundant sub-soil along the 

 southern mail route, and for some distance to the 

 east of it, being often covered with white coarse^ 

 hyalic or glassy quartz sand, the common sand of 

 the Atlantic region. 



I regret that when in Philadelphia you did not 

 visit me. I should greatly have been pleased to 

 have made your personal acquaintance, to have 

 shown you our loamy soils upon which lime acts 

 so beneficially, and to have accompanied you into 

 some of the moie eastern marl regions of the slate 

 than ihose you visited. I should like to have had 

 some conversation with you upon the improve- 

 ment of soil, tor little can be given in a letter in 

 comparison with oral communication. Your pa- 

 per in the pages of the Farmers' Register adds 

 more proof to the opinion which I entertain and 

 entertained, of the action of New Jersey "marl," 

 that it is not a specific, (hence potash is not the 

 fertilizing principle, as asserted,) but act.s favora- 

 bly only^under certain circumstances. Thus the 

 gunpowder variety, whose particles are evident, is 

 valuable when ajiplied lo siiH', or adhesive, or wet 

 soils, whilst the coherent ones are beneficial upon 

 the more open and sandy ones, as you instanced 

 on some of the firms in Gloucester county. It is 

 more easy lor me to generalize, or find a final 

 cause than a proximate one, for Neio Jersey marl, 

 namely, that all production whatever is the result 

 of dirt'erence, and that production ceases eo soon 

 as all differences are removed or cease ; hence, 

 with me, roiiilion is the first and essential element 

 in all c-ood farming, being in accordance wiih the 

 whole^plan of creation, as developed m geology 

 and revelation. One thing prepares the way for 

 another— an order of succession having been esta- 

 blished from all eternity. Take a worn-out field 

 in this section of country, where no wheat has 

 been grown for twenty years, and with a little 

 manure it will yield 25 bushels to the acre; 

 whereas previously it would not produce ten with 



