236 CALCAREOUS MANURES— APPENDIX. 



the application remained under that opinion until almost all remembrance of 

 the experiment had been lost. 



Since the printing of the previous pages in which references were 

 made to the earliest application of marl in Virginia, I have obtained some 

 further infonnation thereupon, which, however imperfect, may yet be 

 interesting. In a recent conversation (1842) with William Short, esq., now 

 of Philadelphia, the son of Major William Short who made the experiment, 

 he told me that he well recollected when his father's first and acciden- 

 tal discovery of marl was made on the Spring Garden farm in Surry, 

 (in digging a ditch across a wet swamp,) and his sanguine and con- 

 fident anticipations of deriving from its use great improvement and profit. 

 Mr. Short further stated that he was then so young, and always so litttle 

 acquainted with agriculture, that he did not know what were the precise 

 facts in regard to the failure of his father's experiment and hopes ; but he 

 well remembers that the result was deemed an entire failure, and that it 

 caused total disappointment. 



Such a conclusion I had supposed before being so informed. I had also 

 inferred, and no doubt correctly, that the supposed failure and truly slight 

 benefit, and the mistaken deductions from the results, were such as have 

 been stated. I have since written to the present proprietor of the land, 

 Francis Ruffin, esq., to obtain the latest information concerning the results 

 of this application, now some sixty-five years old ; and the most recent 

 effects, as learned from him, will be here stated in connexion with the earlier, 

 which will be repeated. 



It was before said (page 70) that this old marling (of about 10 acres) 

 was done on poor sandy land, kept (as was the tlien universal course of 

 tillage) under exhausting culture and close grazing for many years there- 

 after ; that from 1812 the treatment had been lenient; and that in 1819, 

 the superiority of the marled part was visible, and that part of the outline 

 could be then distinctly traced. In 1834, Mr. F. Ruffin applied to this and 

 some acres of adjoining land, pine leaves at the rate of 75 one-horse cart loads 

 to the acre. The benefit from this vegetable cover was so much greater 

 on the marled part, that the superior growth of the next crop of corn and 

 of the succeeding crop of wheat, " marked out the limits of the old marling 

 very conspicuously." The whole was sown in clover in the spring while 

 under wheat ; that on the marled part lived and stood pretty well, while 

 nearly every plant of clover on the part not marled died in the course of the 

 year. In 1837, the whole field was marled, without excepting the old marl- 

 ed part ; and the whole was again littered with pine leaves. The crops of 

 corn and wheat since have shown less improvement from these applications 

 on the piece thus re-marled, than on the adjoining land then marled for the 

 first time. Indeed, the recent and additional increase of corn and wheat, 

 since re-marling has been very little. These results, early and late, are pre- 

 cisely such as might have been anticipated fi"om the action of calcareous 

 manures, and the condition of this land and its management. 



Another experiment of marling, made earlier than my first, by Mr. Rich- 

 ard Hill, in King William county, has been heard of since the publication of 

 the last edition, and of which the circumstances were given at length at 

 pages 22 and 27 of vol. ix. Farmers' Register, to which the reader is 

 referred. It is enough here to state, that the effects were beneficial at first ; 

 but so injurious (because of the excessive quantity) on several succeeding 

 crops, that this trial also was deemed a failure, and the marling a source of 

 loss; and there was no repetition of marling in that neighborhood until 

 about 1820, when other and better views began there to be first entertained. 



There was also successful and continued use of this manure in James 



