MANURE*. 85 



decomposition of sea-salt ; and tiie price it now bears in 

 market will bring it within the reach of farmers for some of 

 the economical purposes of husbandry. 



PEAT ASHES Nearly all peat approaching to purity, 

 when thrown out of its bed and thoroughly dried, will 

 admit of being burned to an imperfect ash; and when it 

 does not reach this point it will become thoroughly charred 

 and reduced^to cinders. In both of these forms, it is a valuable 

 dressing for the soil. It is always better for dry uplands to use 

 the unburned peat after it has been properly composted in a 

 muck heap, as the organic matters which it contains and 

 which are expelled by burning, are of great benefit to the 

 soil. But when they are remote, the peat may be burned at 

 a trifling cost, and the ashes carried to a considerable distance 

 with manifest profit. The principal use hitherto made of 

 them by farmers, has been in spreading them directly over 

 the surface of the reclaimed bed from which they were taken. 



LIME. 



LIME is the product of limestone, marble, marl or chalk 

 after it has been burned, or subjected to an intense heat. 

 In either of the foregoing forms it is a carbonate, and con- 

 tains from 43 to 46 per cent of its weight of carbonic acid, 

 which is expelled by calcination. After the acid has been 

 driven off it exists in its quick or caustic state, and in that 

 condition its affinity for moisture and carbon is so great that 

 it greedily combines with both on exposure to water, the 

 earth, or even to the atmosphere; passing again into a carbon- 

 ate and hydrate. It is in these latter conditions that it is 

 applied to soils and muck heaps. If reduced to powder (the 

 condition in which chalks and marls exist,) limestone would 

 act with equal efficiency as if burnt. 



Lime next to ashes, either as a carbonate or sulphate, has 

 been instrumental in the improvement of our soils beyond any 

 other saline manures. Like ashes too, its application is bene- 

 ficial to every soil, not already sufficiently charged with it. 

 It makes heavy land lighter, and light land heavier; it gives 

 adhesiveness to creeping sands or leachy gravel, and com- 

 parative openness and porosity to^ tenacious clays; and it has 

 a permanently beneficial effect where generally used, in 

 disinfecting the atmosphere of any noxious vapors existing in 

 it. It not only condenses and retains the organic matters 

 brought into contact with it by the air and rains, but it has 

 the farther effect of converting the insoluble matters in the 



