236 MANNER OF CAUSING STERILITY. 



been produced ; and many more are in progress, in spite of all 

 warnings of the danger. 



Though Johnston uses the word " linie" alone in the above pas- 

 sages, or in immediate connexion with them, it is evident from his 

 context that he meant carbonate of lime, or such condition as lime 

 would be in some years after its having been applied as manure; and 

 this condition would certainly not be that of caustic or pure lime. 

 If admitting to the fullest extent the solvent action claimed according 

 to his views, the extreme cases would stand thus : The unrotted 

 and then insoluble organic matter in a soil, which, without calxing 

 the land, might require (suppose) twenty years gradually and 

 slowly to become soluble and fit for use, and to be used by plants 

 as becoming fit, might otherwise become soluble and as fit for feed- 

 ing plants in the course of ten years, if in soil made calcareous. 

 In the former case, the most relentless exhausting tillage could not 

 totally consume or remove all the organic matter in less than twenty 

 years, because it could not be used or exhausted before becoming 

 soluble. In the latter case it might be done (possibly) in ten 

 years, admitting the extreme deduction from Johnston's views; or 

 according to mine (if allowing for the preservative as well as the 

 solvent operation of calx), all the first existing organic matter 

 might be used, and the land made sterile, say in fifteen years. 

 Supposing further, to be produced but an ordinary increase of crops 

 from the calxing, then the total products even in the ten and fif- 

 teen years respectively required to reduce the land to a state of 

 unproductiveness would amount to twice or thrice the amount that 

 could have been obtained in twenty years from the land if not 

 calxed. Thus, even in such extreme and similar circumstances of 

 unmitigated exhausting tillage, the advantage in profit would still 

 be greatly in favour of the calxed land. 



But why should we waste arguments or words on such supposed 

 cases of absurd and destructive tillage, pushed to the extremity of 

 reducing the land to barrenness ? "Whether land be limed or not, 

 a continued exhausting course of tillage, even with some, but in- 

 sufficient intermission, can only, sooner or later, lead to the same 

 result of the greatest possible exhaustion, and with certain eventual 

 loss to the proprietor. 



Even if nothing be allowed for the important preservative action 

 of calx (which in truth would hold and fix all the. organic matters 

 made soluble, until they were used by growing plants, however 

 long that use might be deferred), still I would deny that the sol- 

 vent action of calcareous manures would be of itself destructive or 

 injurious to the future productive power of the land. It is indeed 

 true, that the fertilizing elements thus offered so readily (by earlier 

 solution of inert vegetable matters) might be so much the more 

 readily wasted and exhausted by an ignorant and improvident cul- 



