84 A PRACTICAL TREATISE 



it very soon corrodes the hair and flesh if it has access to 

 water, and horses have been thus irrecoverably lamed. When 

 Linliarnessed, they should, therefore, be kept dry until tho- 

 roughly brushed over, so as to completely remove the dust 

 wliich may adhere to their coats, and more particularly to 

 their feet and legs. They may thus work without any 

 danger; but, in case of accident happening to either men or 

 horses through being scalded by the lime, the part affected 

 should be inunediately washed, either with vinegar or with 

 very sour milk, by which its irritation will be prevented. 

 After the lime has been slaked, it will become effete in about 

 a week, and will then be as little corrosive as any common 

 kind of earth, so that the horses may work among it with 

 entire safety: but if it has been suffered to run into clods 

 ue/ore it was spread, these, if not broken into small pieces, will 

 be longer in absorbing a sufficient portion of air, and therefore 

 will remain longer in an acrid state, so that the ploughing 

 will be better deferred for another week, or even longer. 



When quicklime has been deprived of its causticity, it is 

 called by chemists carbonate of lime, and in that mild state 

 it does not act upon animal or vegetable matter with the same 

 violence as quicklirne, but instead of dissipating any portion 

 of the substance which may be contained in the soil, it facili- 

 tates its reduction into that state by which it the most effectu- 

 ally assists vegetation. Neither has it the same tendency to 

 combine, as it were into a mortar, with the sand of poor clay. 



Lime, however, whether quick or slaked, when used by 

 itself, without any addition of earth, is not possessed of any 

 vegetative quality: thus, 'seeds planted in a ffower-pot filled 

 with powdered carbonate of lime, regularly watered, vegetated 

 feebly, made little progress, and died witbout coming to per- 

 fection; but when partly filled with garden-mould, and car- 

 bonate of lime 1 3 inch thick over it, the plants put down 

 tlieir radicles straight through the lime, without ramifying or 

 stretching sideways, till they arrived at the mould. Even in 

 a mixture where lime was only one-fifth, the plants were poor 

 and sickly, and made no progress ; and when quick, it, with 

 the aid of water, suddenly destroys all vegetable substances.' 

 It may even be hurtful to vegetation when laid in too large 

 a quantity upon very light and warm soils, for, by quicken- 

 ing evaporation, it dries the land too much, by which means 

 plants are deprived of the moisture necesvsary to their suste- 

 nance; therefore it is that calcareous earths are frequently 



