MANURES. 45 



nent. Mixed, too, with any pure animal substance, lime does 

 not waste it, as reasoning from its action on vegetable fibre, we 

 might infer. It facilitates decomposition, it is true, but then 

 it forms with the substaace decomposed, compounds less easily- 

 decomposable. 



The application of lime calls into powerful action the nutri- 

 tient principles of the soil and hence, if land be severely 

 cropped after lime has been used, it is reduced to a greater 

 state of sterility than if the stimulant had not been applied. 

 Lime, therefore, calculated as it is to produce the best effects 

 in fertilizing a soil, is frequently made the means, in the hands 

 of an injudicious farmer, to injure it. 



This is especially observable in the case of light soils of an 

 inferior kind. These are frequently so injured, by injudicious 

 cropping after the application of lime, that they are reduced to 

 complete barrenness. When soils are brought to this condition 

 by scourging or exhausting crops, they cannot be restored to 

 fertility by a subsequent application of lime; on the contrary, 

 a future dose almost invariably renders them more barren than 

 before. The only efficient remedy is a generous application 

 of vegetable and animal manures and rest in grass. 



But although the stimulating properties of lime may be 

 abused, it is an instrument of production of the highest im- 

 portance in the hands of the skilful and intelligent farmer. 

 On land improved and cultivated for the first time, it exercises 

 a very powerful influence, and it is difficult to conceive how, 

 in many parts, such land could be improved at all without the 

 assistance of this mineral. 



Whenever it is deemed expedient to deepen a soil by plough- 

 ing up and bringing to the surface a portion of the sub-soil, the 

 application of lime is not only the most speedy, but also the 

 most effectual means of correcting the defects, or stimulating 

 the productive powers of the new substance exposed. But in 

 all cases, to admit of the beneficial action of lime, the soil should 

 be freed of superfluous water. Not lime only, but all ma- 

 nures, are comparatively inefficient when the land is saturated 

 in consequence of excess of wetness. 



A mixture of lime with earthy matter, previous to its being 

 applied to the soil, is considered as a highly beneficial practice. 

 In this case the lime should be used in its unslacked state. 



The best earthy materials for mixing with lime, are those 

 which contain a certain proportion of decomposing organic 

 matter; such are the scourings of ditches, the sediment of 

 pools, mud deposited by rivers and tides, marsh-mud, and all 

 similar substances. The lime may be applied at the rate of 

 two bushels to the cubic yard, and fifty cubic yards of this mix- 



