SPECIFIC MANURE FOR CERTAIN KINDS OF PLANTS. 101 



instead, in any quantity, either a very slight increase of productive 

 power, or none at all, would be shown in the next immediately 

 succeeding attempt to produce a crop thereon. Whether then it be 

 correct to consider lime as food for plants, or not, it is all-important 

 that farmers should act, in applying calcareous manures, as if they 

 thereby furnished no food whatever to plants in the direct manner 

 that is done by dung. And great as is this error of the opposite 

 opinion, it has had extensive influence and very injurious conse- 

 quences. In the greater number of cases, where ignorant farmers 

 have just arrived at the before unknown truth that calcareous ma- 

 nures are of benefit to crops and land, they proceed immediately 

 to the false conclusion that they will produce benefit in the same 

 manner as putrescent manures ; and they apply them by the same 

 rules and to similar soils, in the vain expectation of in like manner 

 supplying food to the crops. Such course can result only in dis- 

 appointment and loss of means, if not injury to the land. 



As has been stated, all known plants, not excepting the acid 

 kinds, contain some lime, and therefore it may safely be assumed 

 that some lime is indispensable to the growth of every plant, and 

 to even the lowest productive power of every soil. But, for the 

 greater number of plants, the quantity of lime required is so ex- 

 ceedingly small, that they readily obtain their needed supplies from 

 soils the least supplied by nature with lime. And many plants 

 (like pines and sorrel) prefer the soils having such scant supply 

 of lime as to permit an excess of acid. Other plants require com- 

 paratively large supplies, such as clover, and all other of the legu- 

 minous or pea tribe. The ashes of these plants contain compara- 

 tively very large proportions of lime. Red clover, lucerne, and 

 still more sainfoin, cannot thrive well, except on soils largely sup- 

 plied with lime in some state } though, for most of such plants, 

 perhaps a rich neutral soil will offer the requisite supplies of lime 

 as well as if calcareous, or containing carbonate of lime. Among 

 trees, locust, papaw, and hackberry (or sugar nut), are also plants 

 to which lime in considerable quantity in the soil is essential. For 

 all such plants, lime is a specific manure; that is, it improves 

 their growth in a peculiar and remarkable degree, though none of 

 them can take up into their bodies more than a very small amount 

 of lime. 



The following list, showing the proportions of lime in many 

 cultivated plants, is extracted and abridged from the late publica- 

 tion of Johnston, who copied the analyses of Sprengel. The 

 quantities of pure lime are here understood, without reference to 

 the acid (or its kind) with which the liine was combined. 1000 

 parts in each case of the dry vegetable matters are supposed to be 

 burnt to ashes, and the weights of ashes ; and of the pure linie 

 they contain, are only stated. 

 9* ' 



