CALCAREOUS MANURES-PRACTICE. 



113 



When the marl is spread upon the ploughed surface, it can be better mixed 

 with the soil by the cultivation of the crop ; and this advantage in some 

 measure compensates for the loss of that which would have been obtained 

 from an earlier application on the sod. If marl is ploughed in, it should 

 not be so deeply as to prevent its being mixed with the soil, speedily and 

 thoroughly, by the subsequent tillage. To make sure of equal operation, 

 the marl should be spread regularly over the surface. From neglect in 

 this respect, a dressing of marl is often too thin in many places to have its 

 proper effect, and in others, so thick as to prove injurious. Hence it is, 

 that marl-burnt stalks of corn and tufts of sorrel are sometimes seen on 

 the same acre. 



After the first year, the farmer may generally marl fast enough to keep 

 ahead of his cultivation ; and even though he should reduce the space of 

 his tillage to one-half, it will be best for him not to put an acre in corn with- 

 out its being marled. Fifty acres can generally be both marled and tilled, 

 as cheaply as one hundred can be tilled without marling ; and the fifty with 

 marl will produce as much as the hundred without, in the first course of 

 crops, and much more afterwards. 



That rotation of crops which gives most vegetable matter to the soil, is 

 best to aid the eflfects of marl recently applied. The four-shift rotation is 

 convenient in this respect, because two or three years of rest may be given 

 in each course of the rotation at first, upon the poorest land ; and the num- 

 ber of exhausting crops may be increased, first to two, then to three in the 

 rotation, as the soil advances to its highest state of productiveness. 



After marling, clover should be sown, and gypsum on the clover. On 

 poor, though marled land, of course only a poor growth of clover can be 

 expected ; but wherever other manures are given, and especially if gyp- 

 sum is found to act well, the crop of clover becomes a most important part 

 of the improvement by marling. Without clover, and without returning the 

 greater part of the early product to the soil, the greatest value of marling will 

 not be seen. A small proportion of the clover may be used as food for cattle ; 

 and in a few years even this small share will far exceed all the grass that the 

 fields furnished before marling and the limitation of grazing. What is at 

 first objected to as lessening the food of grazing stock, and their products, 

 within a few years becomes the source of a far more abundant supply. 



During the first few years of marling, but little attention can (or indeed 

 ought to) be given to making putrescent manures, because the soil much 

 more needs calcareous manure— and three or four acres may generally be 

 supplied with the latter, as cheaply as one with the former. But putrescent 

 manures cannot any where be used to so much advantage as upon poor 

 soils made calcareous ; and no farmer can make and apply vegetable mat- 

 ter as manure to greater profit than he who has marled his poor fields, and 

 can then withdraw his labor from applying the more to the less valuable 

 manure. After the farm has been marled over at the light rate recom- 

 mended at first, every effort should be made to accumulate and apply vege- 

 table manures ; and with their gradual extension over the fields, a second 

 application of marl may be made, making the whole quantity, in both the 

 first and second marling, 500 or GOO bushels to the acre, or even more ; 

 which quantity would have been hurtful if given at first, but which will now 

 be not only harmless, but necessary to fix and retain so much putrescent 

 and nutritive matter in the soil. 



The above injunction, that "every effor-t should be made to accumulate 

 and apply vegetable manures," should not be limited, as most new improvers 

 would be apt to do, to the mere economical use of the vegetable materials 

 for manure furnished by the crops, and those only as prepared by being 



