CO CALCAREOUS SOILS. 



gas, which showed the finely divided calcareous earth to be thirty- 

 two grains. 



2. One thousand grains of similar soil from another part of the 

 same field, treated in the^ame manner, gave twenty-four grains of 

 finely divided calcareous earth. 



3. From the east end of a small island, at the end of Coggins 

 Point, surrounded by the river and tide marsh. Soil, dark brown 

 loam, much lighter than the preceding specimens, though not 

 sandy under like exhausting cultivation then capable of bring- 

 ing thirty to thirty-five bushels of cftrn not a good wheat soil, 

 ten or twelve bushels being probably a full crop. One thousand 

 grains yielded eight grains of coarse shelly matter, and eighty-two 

 of finely divided calcareous earth. 



4: From a small spot of sandy soil, almost bare of vegetation, 

 and incapable of producing any grain, though in the midst of very 

 rich land, and cleared but a few years. Some small fragments of 

 fossil sea-shells being visible, proved this barren spot to be calca- 

 reous, which induced its examination. Four hundred grains yielded 

 eighty -seven of calcareous earth nearly twenty-two per cent. 

 This super-calcareous soil was afterwards dug and carried out as 

 manure. [It is, in fact, the upper layer of a bed of fossil-shell 

 earth, the shells there being entirely disintegrated and invisible.] 



5. Black friable loam, from Indian Fields, on York Iliver. The 

 soil was a specimen of a field of considerable extent, mixed through- 

 out with oyster shells. Though light and mellow, the soil did not 

 appear to be sandy. Rich, durable, and long under exhausting 

 cultivation. 



1260 grains of soil yielded 

 168 of coarse shelly matter, separated mechanically, 



8 finely divided calcareous earth. 



The remaining solid matter, carefully separated (by agitation and 

 settling in water), consisted of 



130 grains of fine clay, black with putrescent matter, and which 

 lost more than one-fourth of its weight by being ex- 

 posed to a red heat, 

 875 white sand, moderately fine, 

 20 very fine sand, 

 30 lost in the process. 



1061 



6. Oyster shell soil, of the best quality, from the farm of Wills 

 Cowper, Esq., on Nansemond Iliver never manured, and supposed 

 to have been cultivated in corn as often as three years in four, since 

 the first settlement of the country now yields (by actual mea- 

 surement) thirty bushels of corn to the acre rbut is very unproduc- 



