PROGRESS OF MARLING. 357 



"But with all the existing neglect of using this means of fertilization, 

 and with all the still worse ignorance of or inattention to its manner of 

 operating, there never has been a new improvement in agriculture more 

 rapidly extended, or with such beneficial and profitable results. In Prince 

 George county there is not one farmer having marl on or near his land, 

 who has not applied it to greater or less extent, and always with more or 

 less profit and, in most cases, largely as well as profitably. In James 

 City county there has been perhaps the next largest as well as the oldest 

 practice. In York county, as in James City, some of the most valuable 

 and profitable improvements- by marling have been made. And some of 

 the farms of both counties, adjoining Williamsburg, and having the benefit 

 of putrescent town manures, show, more strikingly than any others known, 

 the remarkable power of calcareous manure to fix the putrescent in the 

 soil, and make them more efficient and far more durable. In Surry, Isle 

 of Wight, Nansemond, Charles City, New Kent, Hanover, King William, 

 King and Queen, Gloucester, and Middlesex counties, in the middle of the 

 marl region of Virginia, marl has been already extensively applied, and the 

 profits therefrom are annually increasing. And in other surrounding coun- 

 ties, less abundantly supplied with marl, the practice has been carried on 

 in proportion to the facilities, and to the more scanty experience and degree 

 of information on the subject. It would be a most important statistical 

 fact, if it could be ascertained how much land in Virginia* has already been 

 marled. The quantity however is very great ; and all the land marled has 

 been thereby increased in net product, on the general average, fully 8 

 bushels of corn or oats, or 4 bushels of wheat, if following corn, and the 

 land increased in intrinsic value fully 200 per cent, on its previous value 

 or market price. Where the marling has been judiciously conducted, these 

 rates of increase have been more than doubled. From these data, might 

 be calculated something like the already prodigiously increased values 

 and products due solely to marling, and which will be still more in- 

 creasing from year to year. If not already reached, the result will soon be 

 I'eached, of new value to the amount of millions of dollars having been thus 

 created. * * 



" It required the improvement by marling, on originally poor and mid- 

 dling soils (or liming, which in final or general results is the same thing), 

 to render as generally available the best (and otherwise but rarely found) 

 benefits of the two kinds of vegetable manuring recommended by Taylor. 

 When such soils have been made calcareous, by marling or liming, then, 

 and not until then, all the benefits, presenjb and -future, that his readers 

 might have been induced to expect, may be confidently counted upon. In 

 my own earlier practice and Taylor had no greater admirer, or more im- 

 plicit follower I found my farm-yard manurings on acid soils scarcely to 

 pay the expense of application, and to leave no trace of the effect after a 

 very short time. And land, allowed to receive for its support all its vege- 

 table growth (of weeds and natural grass) of two and a half years in every 

 four, and the products in corn having been measured and compared, showed 

 no certain increase in more than twenty years of such mild treatment. 

 Since, on the same fields, farm-yard manures, in every mode of prepara- 

 tion and application, always tell well, both in early effect and in duration. 

 And even the leaves raked up on wood-land, spread immediately and with- 

 out any preparation as top-dressing on clover, always produce most mani- 

 fest improvement, and are believed to give more net profit than any appli- 

 cation of the much richer farm-yard manure, per acre, made on like land 

 before it is marled. This utilizing and fixing of other manures, and the 

 fitting land to produce clover (and to receive benefit from gypsum on clo- 



