sect. III. THE COUNTY OF FIFE. 245 



and at the same time is dry, or can be dried, 

 will derive great benefit from lime. When it 

 is ploughed, and the tops and roots of these ve- 

 getables are blended and mixed with the soil, 

 and no longer at liberty to vegetate, the lime 

 will convert them into putrescent manure. On 

 the same principle, lime, wjien applied to peat 

 moss in sufficient quantity, provided the moss 

 be relieved from superabundant moisture, will 

 prove an excellent fertilizer, and in a few years 

 will reduce it to good vegetable mould. 



Lime has been justly considered as an altera- 

 tive, /". c. as producing such a change in the soil 

 a.? to qualify it for the production of vegetables, 

 whic;} it never carried before, and enabling it 

 to send forth its own natural grasses with an im- 

 proved quality, and in greater abundance. This 

 observation is confirmed by fact and experience. 

 When mossy or heathy ground has been limed, 

 white clover, and other grasses of superior qua- 

 lity have appeared, which were never seen to 

 grow upon it before. Land has been known 

 to yield abundant crops of pease after liming, 

 which before could never, with the best prepa- 

 ration, be made to carry a tolerable crop. A- 

 bundance of straw there might sometimes be, 

 but little or no corn. This effect the lime pro- 

 duces, probably, by correcting or removing 

 something in the soil, which prevented the seeds 

 from vegetating, or by preparing and supplying 

 the food peculiarly adapted to their nature, but 

 which, before, they either had not at all, or had 

 not in such plenty as to bring them to any dp* 

 gree of perfection. 



