NATURAL CALCAREOUS SOILS. 207 



nor can either of the before soluble parts be thus taken from the 

 other. It is in this manner that lime, even in its soluble forms, 

 is fixed permanently in soils. And whether in this manner, or 

 otherwise, it is sufficiently manifest that such results are produced, 

 by reference to the great manuring operations of nature, unlimited 

 as to both space and time, and compared to which the largest ex- 

 perience and greatest labours of man are as nothing. To these great 

 operations I now appeal for proof of the long-abiding and unending 

 benefits of calcareous manures. 



Soils naturally supplied with lime, in proper proportions, are as 

 much cases of calcareous manuring, as if performed as early by 

 agricultural art and industry. All such naturally limed lands, 

 throughout the known world, have always been, and still continue 

 to be, among the most valuable and fertile. Such lands, in Europe 

 and Asia, remarkable for their productiveness thousands of years 

 ago, have lost nothing of that character to this day. In America, 

 our agriculture is comparatively new, and therefore our historical 

 proofs of such facts are comparatively limited. But even in this 

 new country, the rich soils of the valley of Virginia have continued 

 to bring fine crops for more than a century. And no one acquaint- 

 ed with these and other similar naturally fertile lands has ever 

 doubted that they will, under judicious culture, and equal circum- 

 stances, maintain their present superiority over other poorer lands, 

 through all time. Yet these fine lands owe their value and supe- 

 riority to their natural lime constitution ; and their continued fer- 

 tility, for a century, is but the effect and evidence of the original 

 liming having operated as long. It is true that many such lands, 

 in this country, have already been greatly reduced in fertility by 

 long-continued exhausting cultivation, which has been used to take 

 "as much from, and return as little as possible to the soil. But 

 though such exhausting tillage is capable of consuming and destroy- 

 ing most of the organic matter, and thereby inducing comparative 

 barrenness for the time, yet it does not lessen the lime ingredient 

 and quality, nor the recuperative powers which the soil derived 

 from the lime ; and which, if left again to act, for sufficient time, 

 will restore the former condition of productiveness. Scourged as 

 such soils have been in many cases, by continued exhausting til- 

 lage, they still show, in their most reduced and barren condition, 

 as much as ever before, the possession of the peculiar qualities de- 

 rived from their lime ingredient. When such soils, by time, or 

 cultivation, shall have lost their dark colour, their power of absorb- 

 ing and retaining moisture, and of retaining putrescent manures, 

 and their peculiar fitness for producing leguminous plants, then, 

 and not before, it may be asserted with some plausibility that the 

 salts of lime, which had formerly induced fertility, have been since 

 entirely lost by the soil, 



