92 A PRACTICAL TREATISE 



should never consider lime as the food or nourishment of 

 plants, but as an alterative of the soil; never to be used but 

 when nature requires it, either to dissolve noxious combina- 

 tions, and to form new ones ; to bind loose soils, or to diminish 

 excessive cohesion; and to reduce the inactive vegetable libre 

 into a fertile mould. For such purposes there is not, perhaps, 

 a more valuable article in the whole catalogue of agricultural 

 remedies; but some farmers, who do not reflect upon the 

 subject, when they perceive that lime has once excited the 

 dormant powers of the soil into action, and that good crops 

 succeed for a few years, are apt to draw from thence very 

 false conclusions, and continue liming and tilling without the 

 assistance of putrescent manure, until their land at length is 

 rendered incapable of the production of corn. It has indeed 

 been pertinently observed by a good judge of such matters, 

 'that there is an analogy between the treatment suitable to 

 the animal and vegetable creation. When medicines have 

 removed the cause of their application, they are discontinued, 

 and the patient, rendered weaker by the application, requires 

 some invigorating aliment: in like manner, some time after 

 an effectual liming, the soluble carbon of the rotten dung, or 

 some such restorative, should be applied to the soil to replenish 

 it with what it may have been robbed of by the action of the 

 lime.' 



In fine, lime should always precede putrescent manures when 

 breaking up old leys for cultivation, for, if the land contains 

 acids, or noxious matter that is poisonous to plants, they will 

 be decomposed and rendered fit for vegetation; and hence the 

 superiority of lime to dung on new lands. But calcareous and 

 putrescent manures operate very differently : ' tlie former being 

 more stimulant and corrective, help the farmer to an abundant 

 crop at the expense of the soil alone; while the latter furnish 

 the land at once with fertilizing fluids, and will insure a good 

 crop on a place perfectly barren before, and after the applica- 

 tion of lime.' 



Much uncertainty prevails among farmers regarding the 

 state of lime: some contending that it should only be applied 

 when hot and powdered, and that when it has been slaked, its 

 effect is comparatively trifling; others maintain the contrary. 

 But these disputants consist chiefly of men whose experience 

 has either been confined to one kind of soil, or who have only 

 used it under particular circumstances, and as they only con- 

 demn the system of others because their own has turned out 



