CHAPTER XXI. 



ACTUAL IMPROVEMENTS AND RESULTS OF MARLING. PECULIAR 

 VALUE OP SANDY SOILS. 



PROPOSITION 5 continued. 



When such promises of improvement and of profit from marling 

 are stated as in the preceding chapter, there will naturally occur to 

 the mind of every inexperienced reader the questions, "Has the 

 writer himself met with so much success and what have been the 

 actual results of his labours in the mode of improvement which he 

 so strongly recommends T' From these questions the writer has 

 no excuse for shrinking ; though to answer them there must neces- 

 sarily be obtruded much egotism, and references made to many 

 trivial details, which are certainly not worth being offered to public 

 notice, except as explanatory and in support of the more general 

 %nd important facts asserted in this essay. 



In answer, then, to these supposed questions, I have to admit 

 that, in my earlier marling labours, the progress of fertilization 

 was not so rapid, in general, and the average profits therefrom not 

 so great, as might be expected from the general views and antici- 

 pations stated in the last preceding chapter ; though, more recently, 

 the benefits have been much greater, and full as profitable as were 

 anticipated, or could be counted upon, from the foregoing views 

 applied to the existing circumstances of the lands under the opera- 

 tions. Among the sufiicient causes of the stated slower improve- 

 ment, and lower profits of my earlier labours, were the following : 



1st. The greater part of my land, on the Coggins Point farm in 

 Prince George county, was not of either such surface or soil as is 

 adapted for the greatest improvement by calxing : some having 

 been naturally calcareous, and therefore not needing marl ; and a 

 large part of the farm, where hilly or even of undulating surface, 

 having lost more or less of its soil and on very many slopes, all 

 the soil by the washing rains acting on bad tillage. 



2d. Having at first everything to learn in regard to the practice, 

 and to prove by actual trial, without any light from either expe- 

 rience, or the prior or cotemporary operations of other farmers, 

 much of my labour was lost uselessly in wrong procedure , or was 

 worse spent in excessive applications of marl, which subsequently 

 proved to be injurious. 



3d. The fitness given to the before acid soil, by marling, to pro- 

 duce clover, was not found out, until several years after that best 

 auxiliary to the first improvement ought to have been in full use. 

 16 (181) 



