216 TALKS ON MANURES. 



My father used great quantities of lime as manure. He drew 

 it a distance of 13 miles, and usually applied it on land intended 

 for wheat, spreading it broad-cast, after the land had received its 

 last plowing, and harrowing it in, a few days or weeks before sow- 

 ing the wheat. He rarely applied less than 100 bushels of stone- 

 lime to the acre generally 150 bushels. He used to say that a 

 small dose of lime did little or no good. He wanted to use enough 

 to change the general character of the land to make the light land 

 firmer and the heavy land lighter. 



While I was with Mr. Lawes and Dr. Gilbert at Rothamsted, I 

 went home on a visit. My father had a four-horse team drawing 

 lime every day, and putting it in large heaps in the field to slake, 

 before spreading it on the land for wheat. 



" I do not believe it pays you to draw so much lime," said I, with 

 the confidence which a young man who has learned a little of agri- 

 cultural chemistry, is apt to feel in his newly acquired knowledge. 



" Perhaps not," said my father, " but we have got to do some- 

 thing for the land, or the crops will be poor, and poor crops do not 

 pay these times. What would you use instead of lime ? " " Lime 

 is not a manure, strictly speaking," saLl I; "a bushel to the acre 

 would furnish all the lime the crops require, even if there was not 

 an abundant supply already in the soil. If you mix iimc with 

 guano, it sets free the ammonia ; and when you mix lime with the 

 soil it probably decomposes some compounds containing ammonia 

 or the elements of ammonia, and thus furnishes a supply of ammo- 

 nia for the plants. I think it would be cheaper to buy ammonia 

 in the shape of Peruvian guano." 



After dinner, my father asked me to take a walk over the farm. 

 We came to a field of barley. Standing at one end of the field, 

 about the middle, he asked me if I could see any difference in the 

 crop. "Oh, yes," I replied, "the barley on the right-hand is far 

 better than on the left hand. The straw is stiffer and brighter, and 

 the heads larger and heavier. I should think the right half of the 

 field will be ten bushels per acre better than the other." 



"So I think," he said, "and now can you tell me why?" 

 " Probably you manured one half the field for turnips, and not the 

 other half." " No." " You may have drawn off the turnips from 

 half the field, and fed them off by sheep on the other half." " No, 

 both sides were treated precisely alike." I gave it up. " Well," 

 said he, " this half the field on the right-hand was limed, thirty 

 years ago, and that is the only reason I know for the difference. 

 And now you need not tell me that lime does not pay." 



I can well understand how this might happen. The system of 



