THE LIME IN SOILS 



back to productivity with reasonable ease 

 after very hard usage. It has a good in- 

 heritance. It is a disconcerting fact in our 

 American agriculture that, fertile as our 

 country is as a whole, very great areas were 

 so deficient in lime before they came under 

 man's control that the chestnut, pine, and 

 the oaks of mean growth were fully at 

 home. The gradation from low lime con- 

 tent to high, and its relation to soil type, 

 give us all sorts of mixtures of lime-loving 

 and acid-resistant varieties of trees in 

 original forests, but our agriculture is 

 hampered by the high percentage of land 

 for which nature made no great provision 

 of lime, and on this land farming lags. 



Effect of Irrational Farming. Interest 

 in liming might well have been due to the 

 amendment of all this soil, but the rational 

 use of lime that has been the subject of 

 much study in the last quarter of a century 

 concerns chiefly great areas that probably 

 could have been kept in alkaline condition 

 and friendly to the clovers for a long time 

 despite a short natural supply as compared 

 with the content of our limestone lands. 

 The success of individual farmers in areas 

 now admittedly acid as a whole is con- 



