CALCAREOUS MANURES— PRACTICE. [QQ 



than doubled. From these data, might be calculated something like the 

 already prodigiously increased values and products due solely to marling, 

 and which will be still more increasing from year to year. If not already 

 reached, the result will soon be reached, of new value to the amount of 

 millions of dollars having been thus created. It is not designed in this 

 hasty sketch to enter into minute details of results, nor to prescribe rules 

 for practice, both of which have been given in other publications. The 

 purpose here is but to state improvements and describe results in general. 



" It required the improvement by marling, on originally poor and middling 

 soils, (or liming, which in final or general results is the same thing,) to ren- 

 der as generally available the best and otherwise but rarely found benefits 

 of the two kinds of vegetable manuring recommended by Taylor. When 

 such soils have been made calcareous, by marling or liming, then, and not 

 until then, all the benefits present and future, that his readers might have 

 been induced to expect, may be confidently counted upon. In my own 

 earlier practice — and Taylor had no greater admirer, or more implicit fol- 

 lower— I found my farm-yard manurings on acid soils scarcely to pay the 

 expense of application, and to leave no trace of the eflfect after a very short 

 time. And land, allowed to receive for its support all its vegetable growth 

 (of weeds and natural grass) of two and a half years in every four, and the 

 products in corn having been measured and compared, showed no certain 

 increase in more than twenty years of such mild treatment. Since, on the 

 same fields, farm-yard manures, in every mode of preparation and applica- 

 tion, always tell well, both in early effect and in duration. And even the 

 leaves raked up on wood-land, spread immediately and without any pre- 

 paration as top-dressing on clover, always produce most manifest improve- 

 ment, and are believed to give more net profit than any application of the 

 much richer farm-yard manure, per acre, made on like land before it is 

 marled. This utilizing and fixing of other manures, and the fitting land 

 to produce clover, which effects of marling are in addition to all the direct 

 benefit produced, would alone serve to give a new face to the agriculture 

 of the country. Whatever may be done by clover, and almost every 

 thing that can be done to profit by vegetable manures, on the much larger 

 proportion of the lands of lower Virginia, will be due to the application of 

 marl or lime. 



" Liming. — The kindred improvement by liming began to be extensively 

 practised on some of the best James river lands, where no marl was found, 

 soon after the use of the latter began to extend. Who may have made 

 the earliest and small applications of lime is not known, nor is it at all im- 

 portant. The earlier profitable use of lime in Pennsylvania, and the much 

 earlier and more extended use in Britain, were known to every well-in- 

 formed or reading farmer. Such a one was Fielding Lewis, of Charles 

 City, as well as a most attentive, judicious, and successful practical cultiva- 

 tor and improver. He is believed to have been the earliest considerable 

 limer, and the one who obtained the most manifest profits therefrom, and 

 whose example had most effect in spreading the practice. Some of his 

 disciples and followers have since, in greater rapidity and wider extent of 

 operations, far surpassed their teacher and leader— to whom, however, they 

 award the highest meed of praise for bringing into use, and establishing, 

 this great benefit to the agriculture of lower Virginia. Nearly all the best 

 soils on James river are comparatively of low level, as if of ancient alluvial 

 formation, and have no marl, with which the neighboring higher and poorer 

 lands are mostly supplied. Of such rich lands are the farms of Weyanoke, 

 Sandy Point, Westover, and Shirley, &c., in Charles City, and Brandon 

 (Upper and Lower,) in Prince George — and on all these lands, as well as 



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