662 



FARMERS' REGISTER. 



[No. 11 



in certain clays, and in combination with irori is 

 also in peat soils ; but these lacls have no applica- 

 tion to ordinary soils of any country. Of course, 

 this absence ofautliorily would, to most inquirers, 

 have seemed latal to the position of an acid prin- 

 ciple being generaliij present in tiie soils of Vir- 

 ginia, and in great quantity and power orinjurioiis 

 action. This was. indeed, a great obstacle op- 

 posed to the establishment of my newly-lbrnied 

 opinion ; but it was not yielded to as insuperable. 

 JJiffidenl as I then was of any such views ol" my 

 own, and holding the dicta of Davy as the high- 

 est authority, and even his omission of any position 

 as evidence that it was untrue, or unknown, still I 

 was not daunted, and supposed it possible that the 

 soils of" this country might vary essentially in corn- 

 position, in this respect, from those of Entfland; or 

 barely possible that even the great chemical phi- 

 losopher might not have observed the presence of 

 vegetable acid in the coniparatively few cases of 

 its existence in English soils. The later observa- 

 tions of subsequent years added much to my evi- 

 dences of the existence of acid in soils; and still 

 later and scientific investigations of chemists have 

 served to establish that there is an acid principle in 

 most soils, in the humicorgeic acid. But these dis- 

 coveries ofchemists had not been published in 1817, 

 (if indeed known' to any) nor had my own obser-^ 

 vations reached to all the prools which I after- 

 wards (in 1832) published in the first edition 

 of the ' Essay on Calcarpous Manures,' and 

 which were still in advance of the now gene- 

 rally received opinions of the geic or humic acid. 

 It must therefore be confessed, that if I reached 

 a correct conclusion, it was not on sulRciently es- 

 tablished premises, and known chemical facts. 

 However, reached it was, whether by right or 

 wrong reasoning ; and however little supported by 

 direct proof or authority, I was almost sure, in ad- 

 vance of any known experiment, first, that the 

 cause of the unproductiveness and unfitness for 

 being enriched of most of our lands, was the pre- 

 sence of acid, and secondly, and consequently, that 

 the application of lime, or calcareous earth, would, 

 by taking up and destroying the poisonous prmci- 

 ple, leave the soil free to receive and to profit by 

 enriching manures. 



But even if this theoretical position had been de- 

 monstrated, still it might furnish no prnjil able prac- 

 tical remedy. For admitting that the applicnlion 

 of calcareous matters would relieve the soil of its 

 great evil, and make it capable of receiviui; sub- 

 sequent improvement, yet after being so relieved, 

 the land, I supposed, would be still as poor as be- 

 fore, and would require all the manure, labor and 

 time necessary to enrich any very poor soil ; and 

 these might be so expensive, that the improve- 

 ment of the land would cost more than it would 

 afterwards be worth. These considerations served 

 to lessen my estimation of the utility of the theo- 

 retical 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 con- 

 stituted 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 Ibssil shells, which underlie nearly all the 

 eastern pans of Virginia and several other sou- 



thern states; the deposite which then had obtain- 

 ed in this region, though unproperly, and still re- 

 tains, the name of mar/. 1 began operations in 

 February 1818, at one of the spots most accessi- 

 ble to a cart. The overlying earth was thrown 

 off', and a i'ew feet in width of the mnri exposed, 

 in which a pit was sunk to the depth of but three 

 or (our feet. When night slopped the digging 

 and throwing out of the marl, the slowly oozing 

 water filled the pit ; and as no proper plan of 

 draining had been adopied, the first shallow pit 

 was abandoned, and another opened. In this la- 

 borious 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 hail been cut down three years belore, 

 and suliered to lie and rot until cleared up for cul- 

 tivation 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 of 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 circum- 

 stance, 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 showing than I had dared to, 

 count on. When the plants were but a few inches 

 high, and before I had hoped to see the slightest 

 improvement, (indeed none had been expected to 

 show in the first year,) the superiority of ihe 

 marled corn was manifest, and which continued to 

 increase as the growth advanced. My hitrh grar 

 tificaiion can only be appreciated by a schemeF^' 

 and projector — but such a one can well imarrin^ 

 my leelings and sympathise in my triumph. The. 

 increase of the first crop, corn, I stated, by uuess^ 

 in reporting the experiment, to be fully 40 per. 

 cent., and that of the wheat wliich succeeded was^ 

 much greater. Subsequent measurements of other 

 products of experiments induced me to believe I 

 had under-rated the an)ount of increase in this 

 first a[)plication. (This experiment is the first 

 stated, and at length, at page 37 of ' E.-'say on. 

 Calcareous Manures' 2nd Edition.) 



Great as had been the labor of this application', 

 and small its mcreased product, (comparing both 

 with later operations,) the results served to com- 

 pletely sustain my llieoreticai views, and also, 

 showed the remedy lor the general evil to be far 

 more quick, and more profitable, than I had dared 

 to count on. Another person would probably* 

 have despised this small increase to the acre, if 

 supposing the effect to be but tentporary ; and this 

 all would have inli-rred, whether judging by coiii- 

 parison with all other manures knovvn in practice, 

 or even if by the authority of books. For the 

 best infiirmed of the old writers (even Lord 

 Kaimes, (or example.) while claiminir (or the ef- 

 fects of marl frrpal durabiliiy, still consider that at 

 some period, say 20 or 100 years, the effects are to 

 cease. But my views were not hmited within any 

 practical experience, or authority, but by my own 

 theory of the action ; and that theory taught me 

 to infer that the benefit gained would never be 

 lost, and that, under proper cultivation, the increase { 



