21 fi TALKS ON MANURES. 



yiy father used threat (juanlilics of lime as manure. He drew 

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

 for wheat, spreadini]; it l)road-cist, after the land had received it3 

 last plowin;;, ami harrowin;; it in, a few days or weeks before sow- 

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

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

 small do.se of lime did little or no irood. He wanted to use enough 

 to clianire the general character of the land — to make the light land 

 firmer and the heavy laml lighter. 



Wliilc I was with Mr. Lawes and Dr. Gilbert at Hi>(hanisted, I 

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

 lime every day, and putting it in lar^'C heaps io the field to slake, 

 before spreading it on the land for wheal. 



" I do not believe it pays you to draw so much lime," .^aid I, with 

 tlie coiifiden<e whicli a young man who has learned a liltleof agri- 

 cultural chemistry, is ai)t to feel in his newly acquired knowledge. 



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

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

 pay these times. What would you u^e instead of lime ? " — "Lime 

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

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

 an al)undant supjily already in the .soil. If you mix lime with 

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

 soil it probably decomposes .some compounds containini; ammonia 

 or the elements of annnonia, 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 guan«)." 



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 difTerence in the 

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

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

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

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



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

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

 otiier half." — " No." — " Yoii may have drawn offtlie turnips from 

 half the field, and fed them off by sheepon the other half."— " No, 

 both siiles were treated precisely alike."— I c^ave it up — "Well," 

 said he, " this half the field on the riuht-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 



