CALCAREOUS MANURES— APPENDIX. £49 



and correct views of marl, and had thereby learned to prize calcareous 

 matter in general as an ingredient of soil, whether natural or artificial. 

 But still, even admitting that the shelly portion of our marl would slowly 

 decompose, and gradually furnish some manure to the soil, still it seemed 

 that there was little prospect of its operating as the English marl, of such 

 very different texture and qualities, .1 then supposed that the shells which 

 had resisted decomposition, even where exposed on the surface of the beds, 

 for centuries, would be as slow to dissolve, and to act as manure if laid 

 upon the fields. Still, notwithstanding these grounds of objection, the 

 general idea of the value of calcareous manures would have induced me 

 earlier to try fossil shells, but for being deterred therefrom by the only actual 

 facts then known of the use. When speaking of my thought of trying 

 marl to my friend Mr. Cocke, he told me that it was not worth the trouble ; 

 that he (attracted merely by the name,) had made several small applications, 

 in 1803, on soils of different kinds, and that he had found almost no visible 

 benefit ; and he had attached so little importance to the trial, that he had 

 never thought to mention it, until induced by my remark. This com- 

 munication was enough to check my then slight disposition to try marl. 

 The old experiments of Mr. Cocke, as well as some much older, and, like 

 his, considered worthless by the makers and almost forgotten, are stated 

 at page 70 of this edition of ' Essay on Calcareous Manures.' 



As soon as I was satisfied that I had found in inarl a remedy for the 

 general and fixed disease of our poor lands, it became very desirable to 

 know the strength of different beds, and of the different parts of the same 

 bed. The rules of Davy for determining the proportion of carbonate of lime 

 were easy to apply ; and having provided myself with the necessary tests 

 and other means, I was soon enabled to analyze the specimens with ease 

 and accuracy. This was a delightful and profitable direction of my very 

 small amount of chemical acquirements, and served to stimulate to further 

 study. The amount of knowledge was indeed very small —and is still so 

 with all later acquirements added. But little as I had been enabled to learn 

 of chemistry, the possession led me to adopt my views of the constitution 

 of soils, and enabled me to double the product, and to much more than 

 double tlie clear profit and pecuniary value of my land, in the course of a 

 few years thereafter. 



Though my own doubts as to the propriety and profit of marling had 

 been removed by my first experiments, it was not so with my neighbors. 

 Small applications were indeed made by two of them only, in the next 

 year after my first trial. But either because the land had been kept too 

 much exhausted of its vegetable matter by grazing as well as by cropping, 

 or because the experimenters could not think of the operation of the ma- 

 nure as different from that of dung, or for both these reasons, it is certain 

 that they were not encouraged by the results to persevere. They 

 stopped marling with their first trial, until several years after, when 

 both recommenced, then fully convinced of the benefit, and were af- 

 terwards among the largest and most successful marlers. One of 

 these persons was the late Edward Marks, of Old Town, and the other 

 my old friend Thomas Cocke — who, though he had led me to find the dis- 

 ease, could not be speedily convinced of its true nature, or of the value of 

 the remedy. As late indeed as 1822, when he walked with me to an 

 enormous excavation which I was then making in carrying out marl, he 

 said to me, "In future time, if marling shall then have been abandoned 

 as unprofitable, this place will probably be known by the name of ' Ruffin's 

 Folly.'' " For some years, my marling was a subject for ridicule with some 

 of my neighbors ; and this was renewed, when in after-time the great 



