EFFECTS ON HEALTH IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND. 283 



turally healthy. AncT in the same canton, the pond of Villiers, 

 which is said to be seven leagues in circumference, does not cause 

 diseases on its borders. Besides, during the month of August, the 

 water of the ponds on calcareous soil does not become blackish, 

 as often happens in silicious ponds. The water would then be 

 made wholesome by the calcareous principle, in the same way as 

 their emanations. 



" In fine, Dombe and Sologne, and a number of other countries, 

 are unhealthy, and subject to intermittent fevers, without being 

 marshy; but their soil is likewise silicious, and the land moist. 

 Puisaye, and a part of Bresse, in similar land, which contain little 

 or no calcareous soil, have also many autumnal fevers." Transla- 

 tion from " Essai sur la Marne."* 



In addition to these opinions of Puvis, and his facts in regard to 

 France, I may add the later testimony of two other eminent agri- 

 cultural writers, whose information may be inferred to have been 

 derived from the experience of England and Scotland. In a small 

 pamphlet written by Sir John Sinclair, and dated 1833, on the 

 means for preventing the ill effects of malaria,^ he names as 

 among the most important the use of calcareous manures. " The 

 effect of burnt limestone," he adds, "in improving the quality of 

 the soil is hardly to be credited. It either absorbs any noxious 

 matter, or annihilates any deleterious properties it possesses ; and 

 it may be relied upon as an established fact ' that a soil full of 

 calcareous matter never produces an unwholesome atmosphere.' " 

 And again : " The introduction of immense quantities of calcareous 

 matter into the soil not only contributes to its improvement, but 

 is the best means of preventing malaria." 



Professor Johnston, still more recently, speaks as follows : " The 

 liming of the land is the harbinger of health as well as of abun- 

 dance. It salubrifies no less than it enriches. . . . The lime 

 arrests the noxious efiluvia which tend to rise more or less from 

 every soil at certain seasons of the year, decomposes them, or causes 

 their elements to assume new forms of chemical combination, in 

 which they no longer exert the same injurious influence on animal 

 life." Lectures, &c., pp. 392-3. 



Thus there is now good evidence and high authority for this 

 opinion, which I at first advanced with much hesitation and fear ; 

 and which then met with distrust or incredulity with almost all 



* This work was published in Paris in 1826. The first known (and pro- 

 bably still the only) copy brought to America, was in 1835, by my order, 

 made soon after seeing M. Puvis's essays on linie and marl in the "Annales 

 d' Agriculture Frangaise," both of which I translated and published in the 

 Farmers' Register, vol. iii. 



f This pamphlet was republished in the Farmers' Register, vol. i., p. 

 556. 



