No. 151.] 381 



Mr. Blaikie, in a letter to Sir John Sinclair, dated September 18, 

 1818, says, " oyster shells pounded or bruised (without having been 

 burned) were fii'st used upon JNIr. Coke's farm as a manure in the 

 year 1816. In the summer of that year, the experiment was tried up- 

 on a hungry, light, sandy soil, which had been cleaned for turnips. 

 The oyster shell dust or powder, was drilled, in the usual w-ay, upon 

 27 inch ridges, at the rate of forty bushels per acre, (without any 

 other manure,) was slighly covered with earth, and the turnip seed 

 sown upon it." 



" Another part of the same field, quality of land equal, was ma- 

 nured with farm yard dung, at the rate of eight tons per acre, put 

 into the same sized ridges, and sown with turnip seed as before descri- 

 bed, no manure having been applied. The turnips proved a good crop 

 on both pieces; nor was there any perceptible difference in the bulk, 

 but the produce was not w^eighed, therefore no fair conclusion can 

 be formed; the manure used gave nourishment to the turnips, and 

 the lime excited the nutritive substance in the soil, which likewise 

 imparted nourishment to them." 



In 1845, I was walking with a gentleman over his farm, and he 

 remarked to me, that a certain field containing about 25 acres, had 

 been manured frequently with stable manure, and to prove what he 

 said he turned up the soil in many places, showing that manure pre- 

 vailed in large quantities; still, said he, this field does not produce 

 me more than one ton of hay to the acre, and that well mixed with 

 weeds. I asked him when it had been limed, and his answer was, 

 never to his knowledge. I urgetl him to lime it at the rate of 200 

 bushels to the acre, which he did, and the result was, the following 

 year a very large burthen of hay, consisting of white clover and tim- 

 othy. White clover appears to be indigenous to all soils, if the pro- 

 per manure is present to induce its growth, It is a remarkable and 

 well attested fact, that white clover always comes in the first year af- 

 ter wild lands are cleared in our Western States. No matter how 

 remote they may be from civilization. I am convinced if our wes- 

 tern farmers could obtain shell lime, and apply it to their lands, now 

 rich in vegetable humus, they would obtain sixty bushels of wheat 

 per acre where they now raise but thirty, for the reason that they de- 

 pend upon the decay of their wood for the formation of the necessary 

 humus; which when formed, absorbs over seventy times its weight 

 of ammonia and slowly yields carbonic acid, which is absorbed and 

 decomposed by the leaves of the wheat, and likewise nitrogen, 

 which is mechanically conveyed to the roots. The eifect of lime 



