200 LIME TAKEN UP BY CROPS. 



acre. And if the lime abstracted by the retained straw and other 

 home-consumed crops be added as lost, unfair and incorrect as 

 would be that assumption, the whole annual loss would be but 

 37.25 Ibs. of lime, or say about one bushel of quick an$ slaked lime. 

 If then, 300 bushels of quick-lime had been applied, or as much 

 lime in marl, it would require the total removal of 300 successive 

 crops (and as heavy crops as those above stated) to take away 

 the lime applied. If considering only the loss of lime in the 

 grain, that annual waste, of less than a pound per acre, would re- 

 quire 11,175 successive and as heavy crops for the complete using 

 of the lime applied. In the one case or the other, these respect- 

 ive quantities of lime, annually resupplied to the land, would be 

 enough to compensate for the supposed waste. If the barn-yard 

 and other organic manures of the farm were all saved and applied 

 in time regularly to every part of the fields, then less than a pound 

 of lime added thereto for each acre, annually, would restore the 

 whole amount lost in the sold and removed crops. This is very 

 much less than I had before supposed, and admitted, from more 

 imperfect information than that now furnished by Prof. Johnston. 

 Boussingault reports, among other results of his many analyses, 

 the mineral, or inorganic parts composing the ashes of samples of 

 all the crops of his five-field rotation at Bechelbronn, which was 

 referred to above, for a different purpose. The amount of each 

 crop to the acre, throughout the rotation, had been ascertained. 

 And having, by analysis, determined the constituent elementary 

 parts of a certain quantity of each product, calculation correctly 

 showed the respective quantities of these constituent parts, in the 

 crops of each year, and for the whole rotation of five years. I 

 will extract below, from two of his tables, the statements of the 

 ^average crops and these inorganic parts, which were taken up, and may 

 Tbe supposed were as much of these matters as the crops required. 

 There was an abundance of these matters in the soil ; for, besides 

 the natural original supply in the manure for the rotation, there 

 was furnished, of each inorganic matter, more than all that the 

 crops took up. Of the lime, this supply in the manure was more 

 than quadruple the quantity taken up. 



