416 FIRST EFFORT TO MARL. 



in advance of any known experiment, first, that the cause of the 

 unproductiveness and unfitness for being enriched of most of our 

 lands, was the presence of acid and secondly, and consequently, 

 that the application of liine, or calcareous earth, would, by taking 

 up and destroying the poisonous principle, leave the soil free to re- 

 ceive and to profit by enriching manures. 



But even if this theoretical position had been demonstrated, still 

 it might furnish no profitable practical remedy. For, admitting 

 that the application of calcareous matters would relieve the soil of 

 its great evil, and make it capable of receiving subsequent improve- 

 ment, yet after being so relieved, the land, I supposed, would be 

 still as poor as before, and would require all the manure, labour, 

 and time, necessary to enrich any very poor soil; and these might 

 be so expensive, that the improvement of the land would cost more 

 than it would afterwards be worth. These considerations served 

 to lessen my estimation of the practical utility of the theoretical 

 truth, and to make my earliest applications of the theory to practice 

 hesitating, and very limited in extent. 



Having settled that calcareous matter was the medicine to be 

 applied to the diseased or ill constituted soil, I was luckily at no 

 loss to find the materials. In some of the many ravines which 

 passed through my land, and on sundry parts of the river bank, 

 were exposed some portions of the beds of fossil shells which un- 

 derlie nearly all the eastern parts of Virginia and several other 

 southern states ; the deposit which then had obtained in this region, 

 though improperly, and still retains the name of marl. I began 

 operations in February, 1818, at one of the spots most accessible 

 to a cart. The overlying earth was thrown off, and a few feet in 

 width of the marl exposed, in which a pit was sunk to the depth 

 of but three or four feet. When night stopped the very slow dig- 

 ging and throwing out of the marl, the slowly oozing water filled 

 the pit ; and as no proper plan of draining had been adopted, the 

 first shallow pit was abandoned, and another opened. In this labo- 

 rious and wasteful manner there was as much marl obtained as I 

 was then willing to apply. It served to give a covering of 125 to 

 200 bushels per acre, to 2? acres of new ground. The wood on 

 the land had been cut down three years before, and suffered to lie 

 and rot until cleared up for cultivation in 1818. Though poor 

 ridge land, and of what I deemed of the most acid class of soils, 

 still the previous treatment had 'given to it so much decomposed 

 vegetable matter, that its product would necessarily be made the 

 best which such a soil was capable of bringing] And because of 

 the superabundance of food for plants then ready to act, this was 

 not a good subject to show the earliest and greatest benefit of neu- 

 tralizing the acid. However, notwithstanding this circumstance, 

 and the small amount and poverty of the marl (which contained 



