ON MANURES. 99 



land and properly tilled, to full maturity.* Experience, 

 indeed, proves that a certain portion of lime is necessary to 

 bring all soils into a due state of fertility ; but when they are 

 once saturated with lime, or have got a suificient quantity, 

 whatever more is added only occasions useless expense. Many 

 farmers have also learned, to their cost, that land which has 

 received a complete liming should be either rested from severe 

 cropping, or, after some short time, laid down to pasture. 

 This, however, being not always convenient, the alternate 

 system of husbandry should be adopted, even with the addition 

 of a second year under clover, if the laiid be poor, and the 

 green crops expended on the ground ; and in no case should 

 the soil be deprived of the usual dressings of dung. 



In whatever quantity it may be employed, it is indispensable 

 that every particle of lime bo intimately blended with the soil; 

 for if that condition be not complied with, its power upon the 

 land will be so tar lost as that ©iteration may have been 

 ineffectually performed. Although specifically lighter than 

 any soil, it is, however, very conunonly left in small lumps, 

 which then fall into the bottom of the open furrow when the 

 land is ploughed, and there remaining below the staple of the 

 land, it naturally becomes useless for the purposes of the far- 

 mer : the operation, therefore, demands the piost minute atten- 

 tion. When the lime, which may have been spread upon the 

 ground, has been either already ploughed under, or only har- 

 rowed in, or both, it should be again harrowed and afterwards 

 ploughed in. This must, however, be done as superficially as 

 possible, in order to avoid burying the lime : and perhaps the 

 best implement for that purpose is a scarifier, or one of the 

 many scufflers now in use, as they mix the lime with the soil 

 more etfectually than can be done by the plough. The land 

 must then be again harrowed and ploughed ; but still not to a 

 2:reat depth ; and in this manner it should get at least three 

 ploughings and harrowings, if the soil be light, and four, or 

 even five, according to the condition of the land, if it should 

 be heavy : but, we repeat, that in no case should the lime be 

 sufiered to sink deep into the ground. We have, indeed, cm 



* It has been stated, in the General Report of Scotland, that soils of tolera- 

 ble (luality, in Laminerinuir, only produce middling crops of oats and rye, 

 and that the richest dun<; does not enable them to bring any other grain to 

 maturity ; yet the same soils, after being limed well, under proper culture, 

 ripen every species of corn. The same efllct is stated to have occTirred on 

 the Mendip hills, in Somersetshire, in Hereford, and Derbyshire, and vari- 

 ous other counties. 



