374 [Assembly 



roots, sods, muck, or dry fibres, and use upon such, caustic lime. 

 As all soils are benefitted by mild lime, you can scarcely ever go 

 amiss in its application upon any species of land, as every crop you 

 grow upon it requires, and will rapidly lessen the quantity of lime 

 in the soil. Nitrate of lime is produced in the soil by lime, as it 

 decomposes the earth, rendering it sufficiently soluble to enter the 

 roots of plants. Alkalies and earths can never enter the plants in 

 a pure state, as before stated. Four years since, I manured a fifteen 

 acre lot with oyster shell lime, using 300 bushels to the acre, on a 

 sandy loam that would not grow any thing more valuable than a 

 well known pernicious weed, called St. Johnswort. That year the 

 wheat that grew upon it, weighed 64 pounds to the bushel. I 

 seeded the lot with one bushel of clover seed, and half a bushel of 

 timothy seed to the acre; and the first year after, cut two and a 

 half tons of hay; and the second year three tons per acre. To a 

 heavy tenacious clay, I would not hesitate to use 600 bushels 

 per acre. The chemical action of the lime on such land, is to ren- 

 der it friable, easily worked, less liable to injury by the powerful 

 rays of the summer sun, permeable to atmospheric influences, and 

 easily acted upon by showers. It deprives all injurious insects in 

 the soil, of lite, decomposes them, and enriches the soil with their 

 remains. 



I was informed in Edinburgh, Scotland, by a highly educated gen- 

 tleman, that many farmers in his neighborhood were accustomed to 

 use from 500 to 1,000 bushels of slaked lime per acre; he further 

 said that there were farmers owning peat moss farms in the north of 

 England, and likewise in parts of Ireland, who had used eleven and 

 twelve hundred bushels per acre. They occasionally used, with very 

 good effect, salt with their lime. I saw a farmer living on the do- 

 main of the Duke of Buccleugh, near the borders of England, sow- 

 ing lime, in which he said he had put about six bushels of salt 

 per acre; he was sowing at the rate of 400 bushels. The year 

 previous, by the application of lime and salt, he had produced 3| 

 tons of hay to the acre, when the contiguous lot had only yielded 

 two tons. (For the last five years, I have always used a small quan- 

 tity of salt in all my compositions for grain, grass, and root crops, 

 taking the idea from the Scotch farmer. I invariably soak my ce- 

 real grains in a strong salt brine before planting, and have on two 



occasions used scalding hot brine upon wheat, with great success. 



The elTect was, to swell the grain to a size that it could not attain 



in the earth under ordinary circumstances, in three weeks. The 



aquapine was in many cases plainly discernable.) 



