80 THE SOIL OF THE FARM. 



fine soil. This saves re-filling and re-carting. If the 

 heaps are put down ten yards apart each way, there will be 

 forty-eight or forty-nine heaps per acre; and fifty-pound 

 heaps at that rate would give a dressing of twenty-four 

 hundred pounds per acre. If the heaps are placed fiye 

 by five yards apart, the dressing w^ill be four times as 

 much, or nine thousand six hundred pounds per acre. 



Except on old mossy land, lime is best applied to grass 

 land in the form of compost; and the application should 

 be made in early winter, so that the lime may work into 

 the vegetable surface before sj^ring growth commences. 

 The lime may be previously slaked, or a compost formed, 

 in a corner of the field. It should not be put out on the 

 land in small heaps, as in the case of arable land, but 

 spread direct from the cart. 



Limestone and Lime. — Within a few years the extra- 

 ordinary claim has been made, that finely-ground lime- 

 stone was not only of equal value with, but was actually 

 superior as a fertilizer to lime. This assertion by dealers 

 in ground limestone, and by those who had grinding ma- 

 chinery for sale, was apparently sustained by the certifi- 

 cates of persons who claimed to have made comparative 

 trials of limestone and lime. This newly discovered 

 value of limestone, being contrary to all previous experi- 

 ence, and directly opposed to the know^n chemical proper- 

 ties of the two forms of lime, was the subject of numer- 

 ous inquiries by the readers of the ''American Agricultur- 

 alist," to which the editors of that Journal made the 

 following reply : 



Limestone is a most widely distributed mineral, one of 

 its purest forms being known as marble, and is found 

 almost all over the United States of various qualities and 

 degrees of purity. It is a carbonate of lime, that is, lime 

 combined with carbonic acid. If a fragment of limestone 

 is placed in a glass of water, and a little strong acid is 



