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On the use of Lime in England^ by James Ecroyd, 

 Farmery Philadelphia County. 



Read April 14, 1812. 



Reading lately the Memoirs of the Agricultural 

 Society, on the subject of lime, and having been accus- 

 tomed from my youth, to see it used as a manure in 

 England, I thought some observations on the subject 

 might not be uninteresting to those who may not have 

 had similar opportunities. 



I will first observe, that the parts of the country 

 containing the different qualities of lime, are as obvi- 

 ous in their productions and appearances, as the effects 

 produced by each species, when employed in agricul- 

 ture. For instance, in the fine rich grazing farms in 

 Craven, and all along the course of the river Ribble, 

 the lime is of the mild kind, and the soil the most 

 prolific for grasses perhaps in the world, but the coun- 

 try is so mountainous and the climate so rainy, that 

 very little grain is raised except oats, so that the lime 

 when used as a manure, is mostly spread on grass with- 

 out ploughing, and appeared to answer better on 

 springy wet ground, that had been previously well 

 drained, than on any other. This lime was generally car- 

 ried on the backs of small Scotch ponies, with wooden 

 pack saddles, from twenty to thirty miles, and laid on 

 at the rate of two hundred bushels per acre : and the 

 ponies returned laden with pit coal. The Leeds and 

 Liverpool canal was not then finished, but it now runs 

 through this beautiful lime country, and transports it 



