EAELY OBSTACLES TO MARLING. 355 



and long abandoned experiments, then known, and the opinions 

 deduced therefrom, stood as warnings against, and not in the least 

 as encouragements to repetition ; and the then actually proceeding 

 use of marl, silent and unknown, and to small extent but successful, 

 had not even been heard of. A few more years served to dispel 

 all doubts of those who had tried or could witness the results of the 

 applications of marl. Still, ignorance of the mode of operation has 

 not been dispelled by the knowledge of the great benefits of marl ; 

 and therefore the grossest errors of practice accompanied and greatly 

 lessened the full advantages of the continually extending use of 

 marl. It required but little time for all to learn and assent to the 

 propriety of the one main and simple instruction, (e apply marl ;" 

 but few would consent to learn anything else ; or would believe that 

 there was anything else necessary to learn or to do, except merely 

 to " apply marl." They would not learn from anything but their 

 own dearly bought experience of error. And very many have thus 

 learned, and have paid the cost to their own pecuniary loss of thou- 

 sands of dollars in value whether in delay by misapplied effort, or 

 in positive loss and injury sustained by wrong practice which the 

 outlay of a few dimes, and the attentive reading for a few hours, 

 might have effectually guarded them against. And so it still goes 

 on, and will go on, with all who are new beginners and learners, 

 and who have not yet paid each their hundreds or thousands of 

 dollars in loss, in preference to less than as many cents, in both 

 money and labour, in acquiring proper instruction, and security 

 from all such loss. 



But with, all such enormous drawbacks of loss, which if avoided 

 would have doubled the actually achieved benefits, the extension 

 of marling and liming, and the amount of benefit thence derived 

 and realized in lower Virginia, since 1818, have had no precedent 

 in the annals of agricultural improvement by any mode of manuring. 

 The following extract from a more general report, recently made by 

 the writer to the State Board of Agriculture (in 1842), will present 

 this branch of the subject in its proper aspect. 



"Marling, or manuring from beds of fossil shells. This mode of fertiliza- 

 tion, now so general through all the marl region of lower Virginia, was not 

 practised except on three or four detached farms, and that to but small ex- 

 tent before 1820. Some few and small experimental applications of marl 

 had indeed been made by different individuals, from 15 to as far back as 

 45 years earlier; but which applications, from total misconception of the 

 true mode of action of calcareous manures, had been deemed failures ; 

 and, without exception, had been abandoned by the experimenters as 

 worthless ; and the experiments had been almost forgotten, until again 

 brought to notice, after and in consequence of the much later and fully 

 successful introduction of the practice. 



" Henley Taylor and Archer Hankins, two plain and illiterate farmers, 

 and near neighbours in James City county, were the earliest successful aoid 



