238 BENEFIT OP SUPPLYING VEGETABLE MATTER. 



and rich soil, and yet would be exhausting to a bad and poor one. 

 A good and rich soil may, in some cases, yield three crops of grain 

 in four years, and yet improve by the rest and self-manuring (by 

 its own vegetable growth) of the fourth year only j while very poor 

 land may not increase its scant products, though cropped but one 

 year in three. Yet the rule of resuscitation, and its working, are 

 alike in both cases. The one-fourth of the product of the best 

 soil serves to give it more manuring, even in proportion to all its 

 large crops removed, than two-thirds of the whole product of the 

 poorest soil, in proportion to its very small yield for consumption 

 and sale. This greater supply of fertilization to a good soil in 

 shorter time is not altogether in the mere quantity of vegetable 

 matter furnished. The greater part probably is due to the superior 

 power of a lime soil to fix and so retain the enriching products of 

 vegetable decomposition, which, on an acid soil, wanting this fixing 

 power, would be mostly wasted. This is another illustration of the 

 important economy of calxing all lands not abundantly supplied 

 with lime by nature. 



The allowing to land, after having been marled or limed, a due 

 share of rest from tillage, so as to permit its being manured by its 

 own growth during the times of rest, even if not essential, would 

 be one of the_most important of the accompanying benefits to the 

 farmer ; for by such means of furnishing the necessary supply of 

 organic or putrescent matters to the soil, the same value of manur- 

 ing is given at very far less expense than if by manures artificially 

 prepared in the stables and barn-yard. Highly valuable and im- 

 portant as are the latter, and more especially profitable to the 

 calxing farmer, still their amount is limited by the measure of both 

 the supply of materials and of labour to be given for preparing and 

 applying the manure. But to manure a field by its own growth, 

 requires very little more than to let it alone. If merely left a year 

 untilled and ungrazed, an important gain is secured without any 

 cost of labour or material. And if, as part of a proper rotation, 

 to the resting there is added the seeding of the land in clover, or 

 any suitable leguminous growth for green manuring, the additional 

 benefit will be much more than the additional expense. 



This essential and also highly profitable accompaniment to 

 liming or marling is precisely the condition which is most gene- 

 rally objected to by those who wish to begin such improvements 

 and the most frequently neglected by those who have already 

 limed or marled. In the reasoning of the one class, and the prac- 

 tice of the other, it seems to be required that calxing shall do 

 everything for fertilization and production, without aid, and be 

 proof against all powers of exhaustion and destruction by tillage. 

 And if such unreasonable demands be pronounced impossible to be 

 complied with, it serves with many as sufficient ground to deem 



