CALCAREOUS MANURES— PRACTICE. J57 



and was taken off with other jobs ; but his bill could not exceed eight 

 dollars. The cost of the iron work was ten, and one hundred and sixty- 

 five feet of inch rope, at eighteen and a half cents a pound. The timber, 

 taken from my own woods, may be estimated at five dollars. The rope I 

 find soon wears out, and I intend to supply its place with a light iron chain. 

 " When the marl is uncovered, with one efficient hand in the pit and a 

 less efficient one to discharge the boxes and drive the horse, five hundred 

 bushels may be raised in a day. The work is not oppressive to the labor- 

 •ers. The teams stand on high, dry ground ; no sloughs to plunge through, 

 and no hill to climb. The swoop is turned by a small rope over the carts, 

 and the marl immediately discharged into them. I work four carts, with 

 two sets of oxen to each. They came out of the winter lean and weak ; 

 and now, with green clover for their food, at the distance of a half to three- 

 quarters of a mile I draw out from four to five hundred bushels a day, 

 and my oxen have improved. My work goes on with ease and expedition, 

 without stoppage to mend roads, or to clear ditches." 



Our beds of marl are either of a blue, or a yellowish color. The color 

 of the first might be supposed to have some connexion with the presence 

 of water, as this kind is always kept wet by water oozing slowly through 

 it. But the yellow marl is also sometimes wet, though more generally dry. 

 The blue color of marl therefore is not caused by merely the presence of 

 water, or there would be no wet yellow marl. When both blue and yel- 

 low marl are seen in the same bed, the blue is always at bottom; and the 

 line of division between the colors is well defined, and there is seen no gra- 

 dual change of one to the other. I observed, in the year 1834, that as 

 intense and perfect a blue color as marl has ever been known to have was 

 given to what had been dry yellow marl, by its being used as a thick floor- 

 ing for a stable yard, and kept covered with tlie rotting manure, and pene- 

 trated by its liquid oozings, which the marl was there placed to save. It 

 may be inferred from this fact that blue marls have received their color 

 from some vegetable extract, or other putrescent matter, dissolved in the 

 water passing through the bed. 



The dry marls are of course much the easier to be worked. Unless 

 very poor, and sandy, as well as wet, all our marls are sufficiently firm 

 and solid for the sides of the pit to stand secure, when dug perpendicularly. 



Where a bed of marl is dry, and not covered by much earth, no direc- 

 tions are required for the pit work— except it le, that the pit should be 

 long enough to allow the carts to descend to the bottom (when finished) 

 and to rise out on a slope sufficiently gradual. This will prevent the ne- 

 cessity of twice handling the marl, by first throwing it out of the pit and 

 then into the carts, which must be done if the pit is made too short, or its 

 ends too steep, for the loads to be drawn out. No machine or contrivance 

 yet known will raise marl from the bottom of a pit, or a valley, so well 

 as a horse cart ; and no pains will be lost, in enlarging the pit, and gradu- 

 ating the ascent out of it, to attain that object. 



But it is not necessary, nor often convenient, that the carts shall de- 

 scend as low as the bottom of the excavation. For the lower 6 or 8 feet 

 of the marl to be dug, it is generally best, (after digging an area of suffi- 

 cient size to the top of that part,) to take out this lower part in small pits, 

 of about 5 feet wide to 7 or 8 in length, with perpendicular ends as well 

 as sides. These pits may be filled with the earth removed from the next 

 adjacent space, cleared off for another digging. If the bed be very wet, 

 or unavoidably subject to inundation from streams swollen by heavy rains, 

 it will be more 3afe to dig pits as small as the men employed can find space 



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