198 THE COMPLETE FARMEI^ 



handle, it ought to be hauled on the land already marked, 

 and a half-bushel deposited in the centre of each square, in 

 as compact a heap as possible. If water is convenient, I 

 prefer to slack the lime immediately, rather than to WLlt for 

 rain, as it becomes finer and can be more evenly spread. As 

 soon as it has slacked, it is immediately spread and well har- 

 rowed. This method I prefer for Lidian corn, barley, oats, 

 rye, and potatoes. On all the above crops 1 have experienced 

 a great benefit from lime the first year after its application. 

 With potatoes I add about fifteen two-horse loads of barn- 

 yard manure to the acre, before planting. A second liming 

 is often given, and much approved of, after an interval of 

 three or more years. This amalgamates better, and can be 

 more intimately mixed with the soil. 



' There are good farmers who differ as to the quantity of 

 lime that is most profitably applied; some say sixty bushels on 

 the acre, some seventy, and some more. I have applied one 

 hundred o.i an acre of limestone land, at a dressing ; but 

 have not been able to discover any benefit from using it thus 

 freely, nor any injury except in the loss of lime. 



' Wheat seldom receives any benefit from lime until the 

 second or third year after it has been applied, except it has 

 been mixed in a compost of yard manure and earth. This 

 method is much practised in the lower counties of this state; 

 though not by good farmers until they have applied lime as 

 the basis of melioration. By this management they have 

 raised their lands from an impoverished state, produced by 

 injudicious cropping, to such a state of fertility, as, I am in- 

 formed, to enable them to fatten a bullock of six hundred 

 weight on an acre, and to cut grass from the same acre suffi- 

 cient to winter another. 



' Sandy soils are greatly improved by the use of lime. I 

 lately purchased some of that kind, which was originally 

 covered with chestnut timber, and was called mountain land. 

 It has been cleared seventy years; but lying a distance frcm 

 the farm buildings, had never received any manure but a 

 dressing of lime. This land I have had repeatedly farmed 

 since I owned it ; and although to appearance it seemed to 

 be almost a caput mortuum, with the aid of ten or twelve 

 four-horse loads of the gleanings of a yard of a public house, 

 it has produced as much, and as good, wheat, rye, oats, timo- 

 thy, and clover to the acre, as any land in the township in 

 which it lays. I consider the liming which it had fifty years 

 ago as the principal cause of its fertility. 



