MARLS AND CLAYS OP NORFOLK. SOo 



38. " The principal part of his estate, however, is of a much shallower 

 Boil, not deeper than the plough goes ; and its present very amazing fer- 

 tility he ascribes in a great measure to his having clayed it. Indeed, to 

 this species of improvement the fertility of the Fleg Hundred is allowed to 

 be principally owing. 



"Mr. F. gave me an opportunity of examining his clay pit, which is very 

 commodious ; the uncallow [i. e. overlying earth] is trifling, and the depth 

 of the bed or jam he has not been able to ascertain. It is worked, at pre- 

 sent, about ten or twelve feet deep. The colour of the fossil, when moist, 

 is dark brown, interspersed with specks of white, and dries to a colour 

 lighter than that of fuller's earth ; on being exposed to the air, it breaks 

 into small die-like pieces. 



" From Mr. F.'s account of the manner of its acting, and more particu- 

 larly from its appearance, I judged it to be a brown marl, rather than a 

 clay ; and, on trying it in acid, it proves to be strongly calcareous ; effer- 

 vescing, and hissing more violently than most of the white marls of this 

 neighbourhood : and what is still more interesting, the Hemsby clay is 

 equally turbulent in acid as the Norwich marl, which is brought by water 

 forty miles into this country, at the excessive expense of four shillings a 

 load upon the staith ; besides the land carriage. [The strength of this 

 Hemsby clay is stated above.] 



"It is somewhat extraordinary that Mr. F., sensible and intelligent as 

 he is, should be entirely unacquainted with this quality of his clay ; a cir- 

 cumstance, however, the less to be wondered at, as the Norfolk farmers, in 

 general, are equally uninformed of the nature and properties of marl." 

 Marshall's Norfolk, vol. ii., p. 192. 



The following is a remarkable instance, in a particular district, 

 of a clay very poor in calcareous matter, being considered and used 

 as valuable manure, and a very rich marl equally accessible, being 

 deemed inferior. 



39. " The marl is either an adulterate chalk, found near the foot of the 

 chalky steeps of the West Downs, lying between the chalk rock and the 

 Maam soil, partaking of them both in truth, a marl of the first quality 

 or a sort of blue mud, or clay, dug out of the area of this district, par- 

 ticularly, I believe, on the south side of the river. This is said to have 

 been set on with good effect, while the former is spoken of as of less 

 value ; whereas, the white is more than three-fourths of it calcareous ; 

 while the blue daes not contain ten grains, per cent., of calcareous mat- 

 ter. Marshall's Southern Counties, p. 175. 



There have before been given some extracts from this author, 

 showing that sundry other valued " marls" (so called) were 

 scarcely at all calcareous. Whatever manuring effects all these 

 have, must be owing to some other and unknown ingredient. 



The first extracts from Marshall (just referred to) suggested a 

 remark, which ought to have been made earlier. When there is 

 so much general ignorance prevailing among practical farmers as 

 to what they call marl, it cannot be expected that the most intelli- 

 gent writers can be correct, when attempting to record their prac- 

 tices. When Arthur Young, for example, reports the effects of 

 marl in fifty different localities, as known from the practice of 

 several hundreds of individuals, it must be inferred that he uses 



