LIME AND ITS USES. 



Bt R. L. Pell, of Pellham, Ulster county. 



Lime is an important and an indispensable requisite in the growth 

 of nearly, if not all cultivated plants and fruit trees; in fact, I have 

 never noticed in any analysis made by analytical chemists recently, 

 of various plants, one in vvrhich lime did not form a principal ingre- 

 dient. It must therefore be considered an essential part of all vege- 

 table substances, as a direct food. By chemists, it has been found 

 that the ashes of the oat plant contain five per cent of lime. In 

 two pounds of wheat, 12 grains have been found. In two pounds of 

 rye more than 13 grains. In two pounds of barley, more than 24 

 grains; more than 33 grains in a given weight of oat straw; and 

 46 grains in the same weight of rye straw. It abounds in the wood 

 of trees; the ashes of the oak contain 32 per cent; those of the 

 poplar, 27 per cent; hazel, 8 per cent; mulberry 56, and the horn- 

 beam, 26 per cent. The proportion of lime is found to vary with 

 the composition of the soil on which the plants grow. Thus the 

 ashes of the fir, growing upon a limestone hill, were found to con- 

 tain 43 per cent, but the ashes of the leaves of another growing up- 

 on a granite soil, yielded only 29 per cent. I do not believe a soil 

 can possibly be fit for agiicultural purposes if entirely devoid of 

 lime. Its action is to dissolve and render soluble all organic mat- 

 ters contained in the soil, and before such substances are made solu- 

 ble, they cannot be elaborated by plants. It has probably been ob 

 served by all present, that the effects produced by an application of 

 liquid manures to grownng plants, was far more rapid than that ob- 

 tained by any dry applications. When in England, in 1832, I ob- 

 served that it was the uniform practice among farmers there, to draw 

 upon their field dry manures, and compost liquid manures were not 

 generally used; the liquids were generally absorbed by the straw and 

 dry fodder of their barn yards. 



