CALCAREOUS MANURES— APPENDIX. 245 



of calcareous matters would relieve the soil of its great evil, and make it 

 capable of receiving subsequent improvement, yet after being so relieved, 

 the land, I supposed, would be still as poor as before, and would require all 

 the manure, labor and time necessary to enrich any very poor soil ; and 

 these might be so expensive, that the improvement of the land would cost 

 more than it would afterwards be worth. These considerations served 

 to lessen my estimation of tlie practical utility of the theoretical truth, and 

 to make my earliest applications of the theory to practice hesitating, and 

 very limited in extent. 



Having settled that calcareous matter was the medicine to be applied 

 to the diseased or illy constituted soil, I was luckily at no loss to find the 

 materials. In some of the many ravines which passed through my land, 

 and on sundry parts of the river bank, were exposed some portions of the 

 beds of fossil shells which underlie nearly all the eastern parts of Virginia and 

 several other southern states; the deposite which then had obtained in this 

 region, though improperly, and still retains the name of marl. I began 

 operations in February 1818, at one of the spots most accessible to a cart. 

 The overlying earth was thrown off, and a few feet in width of the marl 

 exposed, in which a pit was sunk to the depth of but three or fonr feet. 

 When night stopped the digging and throwing out of the marl, the slowly 

 oozing water filled the pit ; and as no proper plan of draining had been 

 adopted, the first shallow pit was abandoned, and another opened. In this 

 laborious and wasteful manner there was as much marl obtained as I was 

 then willing to apply. It served to give a covering of 125 to 200 bushels 

 per acre, to 2^ acres of new-ground. The wood on the land had been cut 

 down three years before, and suffered to lie and rot until cleared up for 

 cultivation in 1818. Though poor ridge land, and of what I deemed of 

 the most acid class of soils, still the previous treatment had given to it so 

 much decomposed vegetable matter, that its product would necessarily be 

 made the best which such a soil was capable of bringing. And because 

 of the superabundance of food for plants then ready to act, this was not a 

 good subject to show the earliest and greatest benefit of neutralizing the 

 acid. However — notwithstanding this circumstance, and the small amount 

 and poverty of the marl, (which contained but one-third of calcareous 

 matter,) the improvement produced was greater and more speedy in show- 

 ing than I had dared to hope for. When the plants were but a few inches 

 high, and before I had expected to see the slightest improvement, (indeed none 

 had been expected to show in the first year,) the superiority of the marled 

 corn was manifest, and which continued to increase as the growth ad- 

 vanced. My high gratification can only be appreciated by a schemer 

 and projector ; but such a one can well imagine my feelings and sympa- 

 thize in my triumph. The increase of the first crop, corn, I stated by guess, 

 In reporting the experiment, to be fully 40 per cent., and that of the wheat 

 which succeeded was much greater. Subsequent measurements of other 

 products of experiments induced me to believe that I had under-rated the 

 amount of increase in this first application. [This experiment is the first 

 stated, and at length, at page 72 of ' Essay on Calcareous Manures,' 3d 

 edition. Throughout this republished article, the references to the pages 

 of the ' Essay on Calcareous Manures, will be changed from the previous to 

 the present edition.] 



Great as had been the labor of this application, and small as its increased 

 product, (comparing both with later operations,) the results served complete- 

 ly to sustain my theoretical views, and also showed the remedy for the 

 general evil to be far more quick, and more profitable, than I had 

 counted on. Another person would probably have despised this small 



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