NOTE III. 



THE EARLIEST KNOWN SUCCESSFUL APPLICATIONS OF FOSSIL 

 SHELLS AS MANURE. 



THE two old experiments described at pp. 114-15, though the only 

 applications of fossil shells known to roe previous to the commence- 

 ment of my use of this manure, were not all that had been made, 

 and, which being deemed failures, had been abandoned and forgot- 

 ten. Another, within a few miles of my residence, was brought to 

 light and notice afterwards, by an old negro, who was perhaps the 

 only person then living who had any knowledge of the facts. After 

 I had found enough success in using this manure to attract to it 

 some attention, Mr. Thomas Cocke of Aberdeen, was one of those 

 who began, but still with doubt and hesitation, to use marl to some 

 considerable extent. One of his early applications was to his gar- 

 den. The old gardener opposed this, and told his master that he 

 knew " the stuff was good for nothing, because, when he was a boy, 

 his old master (Mr. Cocke's father) had used some at Bonaccord, 

 and it had never -done the least good." Being asked whether he 

 could show the spot where this trial had been made, he answered 

 that he could easily, as he drove the cart which carried out the 

 marl. The place was immediately sought. It was on the most 

 elevated part of a very poor field, which had been cleared and ex- 

 hausted fully a century before. The marled space (a square of 

 about half an acre), though still poor, was at least twice as produc- 

 tive as the surrounding land, though a slight manuring from the 

 farm-yard had been applied a few years before to the surrounding 

 land, and omitted on this spot, which was supposed, from its 

 appearance, to have been the site of some former dwelling-house 

 and yard, of which every trace had disappeared except the perma- 

 nent improvement of the soil usual from that cause. A close 

 examination showed some fragments of the hardest shells remaining, 

 so as to prove that the old man had not mistaken the spot. This, 

 like other early applications, had been made on ground too poor for 

 the marl to show but very slight early effect ; and as only one kind 

 of operation of any manure was' then thought of (that which dung 

 produces), it is not strange that both the master and servant should 

 have agreed in the opinion that the application was useless, and 

 that all persons who knew of the application remained under that 

 opinion until almost all remembrance of the experiment had been lost. 



Since the printing of the previous pages in which references were 

 made to the earliest application of marl in Virginia, I have obtained 

 some further information thereupon, which, however imperfect, 

 may yet be interesting. In a recent conversation (1842) with 

 William Short, Esq., now of Philadelphia, the son of Major Wil- 

 liam Short who made the experiment, he told me that he well re- 



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