98 ALTERING TEXTURE AND ABSORBENCY OF SOILS. 



of our own soils, different as they may be. Not only does vegeta- 

 ble matter remain without putrefaction in peat soils and bogs, and 

 serve to increase their depth by regular' accretions from the succes- 

 sive annual growths, but even the bodies of beasts and men have 

 been found unchanged under peat, many years after they had been 

 covered.* It is well known that the leaves of trees rot very 

 quickly on the rich lime-stone soils of the Western States (neutral 

 soils), while the successive crops of several years' growth, in the 

 different stages of their slow decomposition, may be always found 

 on the acid woodland of lower Virginia. 



The presence of acid in soils, by preventing or retarding putre- 

 faction, keeps the vegetable matter inert, and even hurtful on cul- 

 tivated land - } and the crops are still further injured by taking up 

 this poisonous acid with their nutriment. A sufficient quantity 

 of calcareous earth, mixed with such a soil, will immediately 

 neutralize the acid, and destroy its powers ; and the soil, released 

 from this baneful influence, will be rendered capable, for the first 

 time, of using the fertility which it really possessed. The benefit 

 thus produced is almost immediate ; but though the soil will show 

 a new vigour in its earliest vegetation, and may even double its first 

 crop, yet no part of that increased product is due to the direct 

 operation of the calcareous manure, but merely to the removal of 

 acidity. The calcareous earth, in such a case, has not made the 

 soil richer in the slightest degree, but has merely permitted it to 

 bring into use the enriching principles it had before, and which 

 were concealed by the acid character of the soil. It will be a 

 dangerous error for the farmer to suppose that calcareous earth can 

 enrich soil by direct means. It destroys the worst foe of produc- 

 tiveness, and uses to the greatest advantage the fertilizing powers 

 of other manures ] but of itself it gives no fertility to soils, nor 

 does it furnish the least food to growing plants. "j" 



These two kinds of action are by far the most powerful of the 

 means possessed by calcareous earth for fertilizing soils. It hag 

 another however of great importance or rather two others, which 

 may be best described together as the power of altering the texture 

 and absorbency of soils. 



At first it may seem impossible that the same manure can pro- 

 duce such opposite effects on soils as to lessen the faults of being 

 either too sandy or too clayey and the evils occasioned by both 

 the want and the excess of moisture. Contradictory as this may 



* See Alton's Essay on Moss Earth, republished in Fanners' Register, 

 vol. v., p. 462. 



[f Confirmation. Lime "neutralizes acid substances, -which are naturally 

 formed in the soil, and decomposes or renders harmless other noxious com- 

 pounds which are not unfrequently within reach of the roots of plants.* 7 

 Johnston's Agr, Chem. p. 400.] 



