422 "RUFFIN'S FOLLY." 



importance to the trial, that he had never thought to mention it to 

 me, until induced by my remark. This communication was enough 

 to check my then slight disposition to try marl. The old experi- 

 ments of Mr. Cocke, as well as some much older, heard of after- 

 wards, and, like his, considered worthless by the makers and almost 

 forgotten, are stated at page 115 of this edition of the " Essay on 

 Calcareous Manures." 



As soon as I was satisfied that I had found in marl a remedy for 

 the general and fixed disease of our poor lands, it became very 

 desirable to know the strength of different beds, and of the different 

 parts of the same bed. The rules of Davy for determining the pro- 

 portion of carbonate of lime were easy to apply ; and having pro- 

 vided myself with the necessary tests and other means, I was soon 

 enabled to analyze the specimens with ease and accuracy. This 

 was a delightful and profitable direction of my very small amount 

 of chemical acquirements, and served to stimulate to further study. 

 The amount of my knowledge was indeed very small and is still 

 so, with all later acquirements added. But little as I had been 

 enabled to learn of chemistry, the possession led me to adopt my 

 views of the constitution of soils, and enabled me to double the 

 product, and to much more than double the clear profit and pecu- 

 niary value of my land, in the course of a few years thereafter. 



Though my own doubts as to the propriety and profit of marling 

 had been removed by my first experimen-ts, it was not so with my 

 neighbours. Induced by my example, small applications were in- 

 deed made by two of them only, in the next year after my first trial. 

 But either because the land had been kept too much exhausted of 

 its vegetable matter by grazing as well as by cropping, or because 

 the experimenters could not think of the operation of the manure 

 as different from that of dung, or stable manure, or for both these 

 reasons, it is certain that they were not encouraged by the results 

 to persevere. They stopped marling with their first trial, until 

 several years after, when both recommenced, then fully convinced 

 of the benefit by my results, and were afterwards among the largest 

 and most successful early marlers. One of these persons was the 

 late Edward Marks, of Old Town, and the other my old friend 

 Thomas Cocke who, though he had led me to find out the disease, 

 could not himself be speedily convinced of its true nature, or of the 

 value of the remedy. As late indeed as 1822, when he walked 

 with me to an enormous excavation which I was then making in 

 uncovering and carrying out marl, he said to me, " In future time, 

 if marling shall then have been abandoned as unprofitable, this 

 place will probably be known by the name of 'Ruffin's Folly/" 

 For some years, my marling was a subject for ridicule with some 

 of my neighbours; and this was renewed, when in after-time the 



