MOST ANCIENT NOTICES OP MARL. 401 



Marl and Marling of tlie Ancients. 



I will add to these extracts, though merely as a matter of curi- 

 osity, the most ancient notices of marl extant, translated from the 

 works of Varro and Pliny, respectively nearly 1900 and 1800 

 years old. Their great antiquity would alone serve to invest these 

 statements with much interest. And it is also interesting and 

 amusing to observe that nearly as much was known of the proper- 

 ties of marl by the then barbarous Britons, more than 1800 years 

 ago, as by their enlightened descendants 1700 years later. For if, 

 in the report by Pliny, the proper names were omitted, and the 

 piece appeared without date or authority, it might well be supposed 

 to be from some one of the English publications on marl which 

 appeared after the middle of the last century. Pliny, and the 

 Gaulish and British farmers from whom his statements were indirect- 

 ly derived, were as ignorant of the true character and action of marl, 

 as were the farmers, and also most of the best agricultural writers, 

 as late as 1780 but not more ignorant. Like these much later 

 writers, Pliny seems not to have known, or, if knowing, not to have 

 attached 'any importance to the calcareous quality of marl; nor 

 was he, more than they, at all precise in distinguishing between 

 marl and non-calcareous clay. Still it may be inferred, from the 

 context, and from indirect testimony rather than the direct state- 

 ments of the author, that either true marl or chalk was always re- 

 ferred to; and of course that it was truly calcareous manure of 

 which he spoke. The manure referred to as being used by the 

 Edui and Pictones, calx, is named with sufficient exactness ; and 

 if not lime, as rendered in the translation, it must have been car- 

 bonate of lime in some form, as calx properly means. But by 

 using the word calx in this case, and creta when chalk obviously 

 was meant, it seems likely that the former was designed for cal- 

 cined lime. 



Translated from " De Re Rustica." Var. Lib. I. Cap. 7. 



" In Transalpine Gaul as far as the Rhine, when I commanded the army, 

 I went into some regions, where neither the vine, the olive, nor apples 

 grew, and where they manured their fields with a white chalk dug out of 

 the earth [candida fossicia creta]. 



Translated from Plin. Nat. Hist. Lib. XVII. , Cap. 5, 6, 7, 8. 



" To improve land (as some conceive) by the application of rich earth to 

 poor, or of porous and sandy to moist and very fertile, is the work of folly. 

 What can he hope who pursues such practice ? 



" There is another method, which was discovered in Britain and Gaul, 

 of fertilizing land with a kind of earth which they call marl \rnar ga\. 

 Greater fertility is perceived. There is a peculiar fatness \adeps\ of this 

 earth which like the glandules in bodies serves as a nucleus for increased 

 fertility. 



" The Greeks also have not neglected this plan ; for what have they failed 

 34* 



