ON THB 



USE OF LIME, MARL, AND SHELL-SAND. 



THE use of lime in agriculture dates from a very remote period, 

 and its utility as one of the cheapest and most effective means for 

 raising the fertility of many soils is generally acknowledged by 

 all who take an interest in good farming. At the same time it 

 is conceded, even by the best friends of this useful mineral 

 manure, that the application of lime and marl is often abused, or 

 at any rate that the money periodically spent in liming might be 

 more judiciously applied by diminishing the usual application of 

 lime, and expending the money thus saved in the purchase of 

 artificial manures. 



The effects of the first application of lime or marl on newly 

 broken-up land that has been long out of cultivation are truly 

 marvellous, and for a number of years the increased fertility of 

 the land can be maintained undiminished. But it is well known 

 that no soil, however fertile it may be originally, can be main- 

 tained in good heart by the use of lime alone. Experience, 

 indeed, has shown that the constant application of lime to the 

 land, on the expense of ordinary manuring, sooner or later will 

 reduce the fertility of the land, at first greatly increased by lime, 

 until it ceases to produce remunerative crops and enters into the 

 condition in which it is said to have been exhausted by lime, or 

 to have been overlimed. 



Some soils are much more readily exhausted by repeated appli- 

 cations of lime than others. There are many soils in the West 

 of England which appear to require scarcely anything else but 

 lime in order to make them yield abundant crops. This circum- 

 stance perhaps explains the fact that probably in no part of this 

 country lime is so much esteemed and so generally applied to the 

 land as in the West of England. Again, there are soils which 

 are not improved at all by lime, and whole districts in which 

 lime or marl are never used by good farmers. The character of 



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