AND HORTICULTURAL REGISTER. 



^ 



PUBLISHED BY JOSEPH BRECK & CO., NO. 52 NORTH M.^RKET STREET, (AoRicuLToaAL WABEHonsB.)— ALLEN PUTNAM, EDITOR. 



VOIi.XXI.] 



BOSTON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, AUGUST 10, 1842. 



tNO. 6. 



N. E. FARMER. 



PRACTICE OF ENGLISH FARMERS FN THE 



IMPROVEMENT OF PEATY GROUND. 

 B;/ Ph. Pusey, M. P., President of the Royal Jlgri- 

 cultural Society of England. 

 [Concluded from p. 34.] 

 I Jo not quite agree with Mr Johnson as to the 

 application of lime in llie quantity or 250 or 300 

 bushels per acre, although he has high authority in 

 the tlieory of Sir Humphrey Davy ; not that I so 

 much doubt its efficacy as fear the expense. In- 

 deed, Sir Humphrey Davy's opinion, that quick- 

 lime will dissolve peat, is now much doubted ; 

 ime, too, is generally applied not in a caustic but 

 n a slacked state, and the advantage of burning 

 ime for farming purposes is by many supposed to 

 :onsist merely in its consequent reduction to a fine 

 >owder. 



As this is a point, however, on which the farni- 

 ;rs of one half of England, the western side, 

 vould probably give an opposite opinion to those 

 m the eastern side, while in Lincolnshire a most 

 mportant improvt'incnt has been made with clay 

 inly, and lime has been tried without any advan- 

 age, it is right that I should now mention two in- 

 tances of great success effected by means of lime, 

 ■"or the first case, I am indebted to Dr Buckland, 

 <n whose application Sir Charles Monleith furnish- 

 d to him the following account of some extensive 

 ■perations on peaty land m Scotland : — 



Edinburgh, Xov. 7th, 1841. 

 " Mt Dear Sir, — It is the geneial opinion 

 mongst improvers of peaty soils that lime is ab- 

 olutely necessary to produce crops of grain well 

 lied with farina ; and I found from experience, in 

 he improvement of part of my peat-meadows in 

 iew of my house, that when the first crop grown 

 pon it was potatoes, well dunged but without 

 ime, the potatoes were found to be hollow in the 

 eart of them and very watery, while in other parts 

 f the meadows upon which dung was employed, 

 otatoes of a good quality were produced when 

 me was employed in addition to the dung. 



I "The farmers in Scotland think they cannot 

 aise good crops of grain without lime, as the 

 reatest part of the south of Scotland is composed 

 f new red sandstone, grauwacke, and granite, and 

 herefore devoid of lime, which forms a very con- 



' iderable portion of every fertile soil ; indeed it 



I 'as found that tlie soil in Dumfriesshire did not 

 reduce well-filled barley-crops till the farmers 



, mployed lime, which they now do to a great ex- 

 eat, and find it equally useful for potatoes and 

 Jrnip crops, which is amply testified by the farm- 

 rs purchasing lime to the amount of 3000/. an- 



! ually from my lime-quarry at Close Farm. 



"You are correct in saying that a considerable 



I art of my peat-bog improvements have been made 



ty lime alone, and have been productive of very 

 alerable crops of hay. I have always considered 

 eat more suitable for crops of grass than corn, 

 n addition to the lime I have commonly employed 



50 or 60 tons of sandy earth to the imperial acre of 

 peat-bog. 



"I have improved al'out 200 acres of peat-bogs, 

 the average not worth (id. the acre in their natural 

 state, now worth fully 3/. A considerable part of it 

 was very expensive to accomplish, as it was neces- 

 sary to fill up large holes from which peat had been 

 dug for fuel : many acres of il cost me upwards 

 of 30/. the acre ; but still this ground remunerates 

 me for the expenditure of so large a sum, besides 

 removing an ugly object in the middle of the low 

 grounds in the neighborhood of my residence ; 

 every hollow, of which there were many within a 

 mile of the house, was filled by an ugly, useless, 

 bl.ick peat-bog. 



" I do not recollect whether I pointed out to you 

 some grass-fields that had been improved from 

 black moor-land, by first pairing and burning, and 

 then ploughing the first season, the ground being 

 exposed tu a winter's frost, and during the next 

 summer lay about IGO bushels of lime upon the 

 imperial acre, and sowing out the ground in July 

 or August with 5 bushels of the holcus lanatus 

 without taking a corn-crop. The reason why I 

 did not take crops of corn from moor-ground gen- 

 erally having a peaty surface of 4 or 5 inches was 

 to keep it in a compact state ; as I have found that 

 soil of this kind, after bearing crops of corn and 

 being frequently ploughed, becomes so loosa and 

 pulverized that the feet of cattle completely de- 

 stroy the pasture, and that the roots of the grass 

 are injured by the loose state of the ground. This 

 grass-land has given nie upon the average from V2s. 

 to 14s. per acre annually, in its original state not 

 worth Is. G(/. The nioor-grounri upon grauwacke 

 after this improvement is much more valuable than 

 where the subsoil is sandstone. 



"I have employed lime as it is practised in Der- 

 byshire to great advantage upon the surface of 

 moor-land ; but as it requires a very large dose of 

 lime, it can only be done where lime is cheap, as 

 it requires from 200 to 300 bushels of lime per 

 acre to destroy the great quantity of vegetable mat- 

 ter in moor-soils, which it soon accomplishes, ns is 

 shonn by the land being soon filled with mole.s, 

 which are drawn to it by the decayed vegetable 

 matter producing worms, the food of moles. 



"In Craven, in Yorkshire, lime is employed very 

 extensively as a top-dressing even upon limestone- 

 soil. I have found that the cattle feed upon pas- 

 ture well top-dressed with lime much quicker, and 

 that the meat is much richer and better mixed, than 

 upon pastures apparently equally productive of herb- 

 age. 



" I remain, dear Sir, 



Yours truly, 



" C. G. Stuart Monteith. 

 " The Rev. Dr. Buckland." 



It is certainly a very successful operation to 

 have improved, at whatever expense, 200 acres of 

 land from the value of si.xpence per acre to that of 

 throe pounds. I have lately seen as great an im- 

 provement upon the property of Mr Blake, at Up- 

 ton, in West Somersetshire. The peat-bogs there 



lie on the slope of a hill. The mode of treat- 

 ment was this: — To underdrain at depths vary- 

 ing from 3 to G feet, to pare and burn the surface, 

 to grow turnips two years successively, dres.iing 

 twice with 50 bushels of lime per acre, then to 

 lay the land doivn with grass seeds to permanent 

 pasture. The grass is let yearly at sums varying 

 from 3/. to 41. per acre. It ia singular that in one 

 field so treated, and afterwards watered, no trace 

 of the peat remained in the upper part of the soil, 

 which had become a pale-colored earth — I suppose 

 by the entire destruction of the peaty substance. 

 The grass on this land is sweet and close, like the 

 turf upon chalk downs, and the land almost as 

 firm. This land is on the same subsoil with Sir 

 Charles Monteith's, the grauwacke or shillet, an 

 imperfect clay-slate, which in Somersetshire, as in 

 Scotland, is considered favorable to grass. 



It is proved then, by the success of farmers gen- 

 erally in the fens of our eastern counties, of Sir 

 Charles Monteith in Scotland, and of Mr Blake in 

 West Somerset, that peat, which by nature is the 

 nmst unpromising of all wastes, can lie profitably 

 improved, and even be raised to the rank of our 

 most productive soils. But, in order to effect this 

 great benefit, it is considered necessary that either 

 clay or lime should be applied to the surface — 

 which, however, of the two is not certain. Find- 

 ing this variety of practice, I have endeavor- 

 ed, in the course of drawing up this statement, 

 to obtain fresh evidence in order to clear up 

 the point. I cannot say that I have succeeded in 

 clearing in up ; but the facts which have come to 

 my knowledge may serve as materials for future 

 inquiry, and I ought therefore to lay them shortly 

 before the Society. It occurred to me that, as the 

 Lincolnshire farmers, who had been so successful 

 in the use of clay, had derived no benefit from the 

 use of lime, the Lincolnshire clay possibly contain- 

 ed lime already. Mr Cooke, at my request, sent 

 me two specimens of clay from Digby Fen : one 

 of these, a very strong clay in appearance, effer- 

 vesced much with muriatic acid, and consisted 

 entirely of finely-powdered lime mixed with fine 

 sand. It contained, I believe, scarcely any true 

 clay ; it is, in fact, a strong blue marl. The sec- 

 ond specimen contained no lime at all, some true 

 clay, and a great deal of fine sand. Mr Cooke 

 stated, as I expected, that the first specimen was a 

 much more effective dressing than the second : 

 but I learn on the other hand from Handley, that a 

 clay resembling Mr Cooke's second specimen had 

 been used with great success by a relative of his 

 own ; and a clay of Mr Wingate's, which I ex- 

 amined three years since, certainly contained no 

 lime at all. Lime, therefore, is not indispensable 

 for the improvement of .lome peat. Dr Buckland 

 suggested to me that such peat may contain lime 

 already ; and I have since found his conjecture 

 perfectly right in the following instance. On my 

 mentioning to Mr Wingate that some of the Lin- 

 colnshire clay is in fact marl, he replied that he 

 had carted marl upon peat without benefit, but had 

 found clay to answer upon the same peat. I ask- 



