MARL : ITS NATURE AND EFFECTS. 167 



In connection with the foregoing extracts we add a 

 few facts and experiments, collected from the gentle- 

 men whose names are used : 



Messrs. Tunis and John B. Forman say that they 

 have used Squancum marl at the rate of one hundred 

 bushels to the acre, on very poor, worn out, cold clay 

 land : the product of the first year was thirty bushels 

 of buckwheat to the acre ; and the second year (it 

 being sowed the year before with clover and herd) it 

 cut a ton or more of good hay per acre, after which 

 about one hundred bushels of marl per acre were 

 scattered over the seed, and it now yields two tons of 

 good hay to the acre. 



They have also resuscitated mowing-ground after it 

 had become too poor to produce a crop, by spreading 

 one hundred bushels of marl per acre over the sod, and 

 the effect was to mellow the soil, and produce two 

 tons of hay to the acre : the hay produced was of a 

 superior quality, and free from weeds. One hundred 

 bushels of marl to the acre of land, so poor as to have 

 been considered useless, will raise a crop of from 

 twelve to twenty bushels of rye per acre, and leave a 

 fine sod of white clover. From three pints to two 

 quarts of marl per hill of potatoes (the hills three feet 

 apart on poor ground) has produced from two hundred 

 to two hundred and fifty bushels per acre. 



They have found the marl a superior manure for 

 turnips and garden truck in general. The eff*ect of 

 marling lands planted with apple-trees is astonishing 

 in improving the trees and fruit. They have known 

 marl to be spread on a bog-meadow, and to cause 

 double the quantity of superior hay to be produced. 

 A neighbor of theirs, a few years since, sowed out of 

 a basket about one hundred bushels of buckwheat. 



Dr. Forman states that, two or three years ago, he 

 broke up a small piece of land, which he for forty 

 years had considered too poor to plough, and applied 



