664 



FARMERS' REGISTER. 



[No. 11 



shells being Tound in poor land of any description 

 has come to my knowledge. 



"Iftliese premises are correct, no other conclusion 

 can be drawn from them but that a proportion of 

 calcareous earth gives to soil a capacity for im- 

 provement which it has not without ; and it also 

 follows, that by an application of shell-marl, the 

 worst land would be enabled to digest and retam 

 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 li-om 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 rea- 

 dily see the impropriety of calling such a soil ab- 

 solutely barren. 



"From the circumstance of this soil being so con- 

 genial 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 forest trees are furnishint; the 

 earth with poison as liberally as food, while it de- 

 pends entirely on the presence of the antidote, 

 whether 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 gul- 

 lies; 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 ac; 

 tual capacity : sorrel will no longer be troublesome; 

 and, by a very heavy covering, I have known a 

 spot; rendered incapable of producing it, although 

 the adjoming land is quickly set to the edce. 

 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 supportinij 

 much heavier crops, without being (as yet) at all 

 richer than it was.'* — Com. to Pr. Geo. jlgr. Sac. 



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 di- 

 gression. 



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, in- 

 directly, by the train of reasoning indicated above. 

 There were hundreds of persons who afterwards 

 aaid, "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 post- 

 poning 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 exten- 

 sively 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 1 was deterred from using our marl, 



which agreed with it (apparently) in nothing but 

 name. Struck with the importance attacted to 

 marl in England, I had earnestly desired to find if, 

 and had searched for it in vain, years before the 

 early beginning of my farming. The name in- 

 duced a close examination of' what was called 

 mar! here ; but the " soapy feel," the absence of 

 grit, the crumbling and melting of lumps in water 

 &c., which were the most distinguishing charac- 

 teristics 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 olten of almost stony hard- 

 ness, and if not, at least showed nothing of the 

 melting disposition of the English marls. 1 had be- 

 fore this, however, found in the American edition 

 of the 'Edinburgh Encyclopedia,' more modern 

 and correct views of marl, and had thereby learned 

 to prize calcareous ^natter in general, as an ingre- 

 dient of soil whether natural or artificial. But still, 

 even admittins that the shelly portion of our marl 

 would slowly\lecompose, 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. 

 I 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 dis- 

 solve, and to act as manure, if laid upon the fields. 

 Still, notwithstanding these grounds of objection, 

 the general idea of the value of calcareous ma- 

 nures 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, lie told me that it was not 

 worth the trouble ; that he (attracted merely by 

 the name,) had made several small applications, 

 in 1303, on soils of different kinds, and that he had 

 found almost no visible benefit ; and he had at- 

 tached so little importance to the trial, that he 

 had never thouirht to mention it, until induced by 

 my remark. This communication vvas enough to 

 check mv 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 36 of ' Essay on Calcareous Manures.' 



As soon as 1 was satisfied that 1 had found in 

 marl a remedy for the general and fixed disease of 

 our poor lands, it became very desirable to know 

 the strength of difl'erent beds, and of the diflerent 

 parts of the same bed. The rules of Davy, for de- 

 termining the proportion ofcarbonateof lime, were 

 easy to a^pply ; 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 delightfiil and profitable di- 

 rection of my very small amount of chemical ac- 

 quirements, and served to stimulate toflirther stu- 

 dy. The amount of knowledge was indeed very 

 small— and is still so, with all later acquirements ad- 

 ded. 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 the clear profit and pecuniary value of my 

 land, in the course of a few years after. 



Though my own doubts as to the propriety and 

 profit of marling had been removed by my first 

 experimer\ts, it was not so with my neighbors. 



