248 CALCAREOUS MANURES— APPENDIX. 



improvement which it has not without ; and it also follows, that by an ap- 

 plication of shell-marl, the worst land would be enabled to digest and retain 

 that food, which has hitherto been of little or no advantage." * * * 



" The property of fixing manures is not more important in marl, than 

 that of destroying acids. The unproductiveness of our lands arises not so 

 much from the absence of food as the presence of poison. We are so much 

 accustomed to see a luxuriant and rapid growth of pines cover land on 

 which no crop can thrive, that we cannot readily see the impropriety of 

 calling such a soil absolutely barren. 



" From the circumstance of this soil being so congenial to the growth of 

 pine and sorrel, (both of which are acid plants,) it seems probable that it 

 abounds in acidity, or acid combinations, which, (although destructive to 

 all valuable crops,) are their food while living, and product when dead. 

 The most common foi'est trees are furnishing the earth with poison as libe- 

 rally as food, while it depends entirely on the presence of the antidote, whe- 

 ther one or the other takes effect. I have observed a very luxuriant growth 

 of sorrel on land too poor to support vegetables of any kind, from green 

 pine brush having been buried to stop gullies; and it is well known how 

 much land on which pines have rotted is infested with this pernicious plant. 

 Marl will immediately neutralize the acid, and this noxious principle being 

 removed, the land will then for the first time yield according to its actual 

 capacity. Sorrel will no longer be troublesome ; and, by a very heavy co- 

 vering, I have known a spot rendered incapable of producing it, although 

 the adjoining land was thickly set to the edge. Pines do not thrive on shelly 

 land, whether fertile or exhausted. To this cause I attribute the great and 

 immediate benefit I derived from marl on new-ground. The acid produced 

 by the pine leaves is destroyed, and the soil is capable of supporting much- 

 heavier crops, without being (as yet) at all richer than it was." — Communi- 

 cation to Prince George Agricultural Society. 



Before proceeding to state later experiments, and general practice and 

 results, it will be necessary to recur to some other connected branches of 

 the subject. The reader will pardon the apparent digression. 



So well established and general has the opinion now become that this 

 marl is a manure, and a most valuable one, that it may seem strange that 

 I should have only arrived at such an opinion indirectly, by the train of 

 reasoning indicated above. There were hundreds of persons who after- 

 wards said, " Oh ! / never doubted that marl was a good manure ;" but 

 not one of whom had been induced to try its operation. But passing by 

 these postponing believers, and all others who confessedly never attached 

 any value to this great deposite, it may require explanation why I had not 

 learned its value from English works which treat so extensively on marl, 

 even though I had then had access to but few of them. It was precisely 

 because I had read attentively some of the English accounts of marl that I 

 was deterred from using our marl, which agreed with it (apparently) in 

 nothing but name. Struck with the importance attached to marl in 

 England, I had earnestly desired to find it, and had searched for it in vain, 

 years before the early beginning of my farming. The name induced a 

 close examination of what was called marl here ; but the " soapy feel," 

 the absence of grit, the crumbling and melting of lumps in water, &c., 

 which were the most distinguishing characteristics of the marl of the 

 English writers, were in vain looked for in our shell beds — of which the earth 

 was generally sandy, never " soapy," and of which the lumps were often 

 of almost stony hardness, and if not, at least showed nothing of the 

 melting disposition of the English marls. I had before this found, however, 

 in the American edition of the ' Edinburgh Encyclopaedia,' more modern 



