LIME AIDING LEGUMINOUS PLANTS. 263 



And that the important benefits thus to be derived are available 

 only through the aid of lime in soil, is the important deduction 

 from the foregoing positions, as premises, which I now design to 

 maintain. 



It is not necessary' to repeat the many statements, in the forego- 

 ing portion of this essay, of the peculiar and all-important aid and 

 support which calcareous matter in soils furnishes for the growth 

 and luxuriance of leguminous plants especially. In some small 

 proportion, lime in soil is essential to the life of all plants, and to 

 even the poorest product from all cultivated crops. In larger, 

 though it may still be but very small proportion, it further and 

 greatly improves the growth and production of all cultivated crops, 

 and all except acid plants. And lime in greater quantity still, in 

 amount serving to constitute truly calcareous soil, is especially 

 promotive of the vigour and luxuriance of growth of all leguminous 

 plants, and even essential to the existence of some of them. Saint- 

 loin, a valuable forage plant of highly calcareous lands in Europe, 

 cannot live in any natural (non-calcareous) soil of our Atlantic 

 slope. Lucerne, for the same reason, rarely thrives here, and never 

 except in the best artificial soils. Red clover, the chief of manuring 

 and forage plants, and which now serves as one of the principal and 

 essential elements of our present improving agricultural system, in 

 connexion with the use of calcareous manures, had no existence 

 and could not exist in field culture in the tide-water region before 

 the fitting the soils for its support, by the use of marl and lime. 



To the next most important legume and manuring plant, our 

 field pea or bean, lime in quantity is as much conducive to its greatest 

 production, as to clover; but it is not so essential for the existence, 

 and moderate productiveness, of this kind of bean. 



3. Operation of calcareous earth to produce nitrates in soilj 

 and compost heaps. 



In sundry marginal notes to the foregoing pages, the recent 

 words or opinions of Prof. Johnston have been quoted, to show 

 their concurrence with my own earlier stated positions. It is highly 

 gratifying to me that such confirmation, having such authority, 

 may be adduced to support nearly every deduction of mine that 

 bears strongly upon, or would either direct or divert practical ope- 

 rations. His lecture " on the use of lime as a manure/' especially 

 offers a copious mass of information on this subject, both scientific 

 and practical, which is generally correct, and more instructive than 

 all that had been before published by preceding English chemists 

 and agriculturists. When so many points of agreement appear of 

 this scientific work with mine, which has so little pretension to 

 science, it is well that my priority of publication must secure me 

 from any possible charge of plagiarism. I am altogether unqualified 



