28 CALCAREOUS MANURES— THEORY. 



Smith,) contains the following expressions. " By proper exertions, every 

 farm in the United States can be manured with less expense than the sur- 

 plus profits arising from the manure would come to. This we sincerely 

 believe, and we have arrived at this conclusion from long and attentive 

 observation. We never yet saw a farm that we could not point to means 

 of manuring, and bring into a state of high and profitable cultivation at an 

 expense altogether inconsiderable when contrasted with the advantages 

 to be derived from it." The remainder of the article shows that putrescent 

 manures are principally relied on to produce these effects ; marsh and 

 swamp mud are the only kinds referred to that are not entirely putrescent 

 in, their action, and mud certainly cannot be used to manure every farm. 

 Mr. Smith having been long the conductor of a valuable agricultural jour- 

 nal, as a matter of course, is extensively acquainted with the works and 

 opinions of the best writers on agriculture ; and therefore, his advancing 

 the foregoing opinions, as certain and undoubted, is as much a proof of the 

 general concurrence therein of preceding writers, as if the same had 

 been given as a digest of their precepts. 



Some persons will readily admit the great difference in the capacities of 

 soils for improvement, but consider a deficiency of clay only to cause the 

 want of power to retain manures. The general excess of sand in our poor 

 lands might warrant this belief in a superficial and limited observer. But 

 though clay soils are more rarely met with, they present, in proportion to 

 their extent, full as much poor land. The most barren and worthless soils 

 in the county of Prince George are also the stiffest. A poor clay soil will 

 retain manure longer than a poor sandy soil —but it will not the less cer- 

 tainly lose its acquired fertility at a somewhat later period. When it is 

 considered that a much greater quantity of manure is required by clay 

 soils, it may well be doubted whether the temporary improvement of the 

 sandy soils would not be attended with more profit —or, more properly 

 speaking, with less actual loss. 



It is true that the capacity of a soil for improvement is greatly affected 

 by its texture, shape of the surface, and its supply of moisture. Dry, level, 

 or clay soils, will retain manure longer than the sandy, hilly, or wet. But 

 however important these circumstances may be, neither the presence or 

 absence of any of them can cause the essential differences of capacity for 

 improvement. There are some rich and valuable soils with either one or 

 more of all these faults— and there are other soils the least capable of re- 

 ceiving improvement, free from objections as to their texture, degree of 

 moisture, or inclination of their surface. Indeed the great body of our 

 poor ridge lands are more free from faults of this kind, than soils of far 

 greater productiveness usually are. Unless then some other and far more 

 powerful obstacle to improvement exists, why should not all our wood-land 

 be highly enriched, by the hundreds, or thousands, of crops of leaves which 

 have successively fallen and rotted there 1 Notwithstanding this vegetable 

 manuring, which infinitely exceeds all that the industry and patience of 

 man can possibly equal, most of our wood-land remains poor ; and this one 

 fact (which at least is indisputable) ought to satisfy all of the impossibility 

 of enriching such soils by putrescent manures only. Some few acres may 

 be highly improved, by receiving all the manure derived from the ofTal of 

 the whole farm— and entire farms, in the neighborhood of towns, may be 

 kept rich by continually applying large quantities of purchased manures. 

 But no where can a farm be found, which has been improved beyond its 

 original fertility, by means of the vegetable resources of its own arable 

 fields. If this opinion is erroneous, nothing is easier than to prove my mistake, 

 by adducing undoubted examples of such improvements having been made. 

 But a few remarks will suffice on the capacity for improvement of worn 



