AND HORTICULTURAL REGISTER. 



PUnLISHED BV JOSEPH BRECK & CO., NO. 52 NORTH MARKET STREET, (Aghicultural Warehohbe.) 



VOL.. XVII.] 



BOSTON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, APRIL 3, 1839. 



[NO. 39. 



N. E, FARMER 



[At our request we have been politely furnished 

 by the author with the following extracts. They 

 are sensible, instructive and eloquent. We are 

 happy to enrich our columns with them ; and we 

 hope he will do us the kindness to furnish us with 

 the other parts of the address.] 



EXTRACTS FROM AN ADDRESS 

 Delivered at Pitlsfied, on the Alh of October last, be- 

 fore the Berkshire ^Igricultural Society, at their 

 Anniversnrij, by the Hon. Lestkr Fillet, Pres- 

 ident of said Society. 



Gentlemen, — There is another topic, not inti- 

 mately connected, perhaps, with the prominentsub- 

 ject of this Address, but lying at the foundation of 

 all permanent agricultural improvements, to which 

 your attention is solicited. The researches of the 

 learned Professor, acting under a commission from 

 the Executive of this Commonwealth, who has re- 

 cently re-examined this county with reference to 

 economical Geology, have disclosed the mineral 

 elements of fertility without « liich putrescent, ani- 

 mal and vegetable substances, the proper aliments 

 of vegetation, are temporary and irregular in their 

 effects. The marl deposits which be has discover- 

 ed in several places, ar.d their probable existence 

 in other localities, are important accessions to our 

 agricultural resources. 



The value of lime, the basis of marl, as well in 

 a caustic state as in its chemiciil union with some 

 of the acids, has, in many places, been properly 

 appreciated. 



However well the other essential earthy constit- 

 uents of the soil may be adjusted, if calcareous mat- 

 ter be absent, lasting fertility cannot be expected. 

 For evidence of the effects of the restoration of 

 this element to the soil of which, by long cropping 

 and cultivation, it had been exhausted, we need 

 not look beyond the limits of our own country, the 

 silicioua barrens of New Jersey, the sands upon 

 tlie shores of the Chesapeake and Delaware, and 

 the pine plains of Virginia reduced to sterility by 

 improvident husbandry, are becoming fiuitful 

 through the agencies, chemical and mechanical, of 

 this substance. To her marl pits southern New 

 Jersey is indebted for her corn fields and her clover 

 leys — to her lime beds Pennsylvania may, in some 

 of her most prosperous counties, give full credit 

 for her extensive wheat harvests. Our own soil, 

 reposing in the main upon beds of lime rock, 

 strange as it may seem, yields upon analysis no 

 notable proportion of this fertilizing mineral. May 

 not the productiveness of our lands, tillage and 

 grazing, be increased and prolonged by adopting 

 the means employed by our neighbors of New Jer- 

 sey and Pennsylvania ? This is a question which 

 some of us may be compelled to answer practically 

 in the affirmative, if we continue to pursue the 

 present system of cultivation and rely solely upon 

 the usual sources of renovation and fertility. The 

 supplies of the stable and barn yard sweepings 

 will keep a small portion only of the lands, which 



we occupy and pretend to improve, in their present 

 state of fertility, unless some substance be applied 

 which shall check their too rapid decomposition 

 and fix in the soil the enriching properties which 

 they evolve. To accomplish this, lime, in a cal- 

 cined state, or in the form of marl, must be employ- 

 ed. Within this county the experiments made with 

 this substance are comparatively few, and in some 

 instances, I am aware, they liave not been attended 

 with the success anticipated. Quick ard abundant 

 returns have been expected ; it has been applied 

 where there was a deficiency of the components of 

 the vegetable structure and expected to supply the 

 absent elements, or at least in their absence to per- 

 form their duties. The processes of the experi- 

 ment have been conducted in an unskilful manner, 

 in ignorance of the nature or without regard to the 

 modes of action of the substance. Many of the 

 failures which attend inexperience in the outset 

 have occurred, and a distrust in the efficacy ascrib- 

 ed to it, has been produced — a distrust which a 

 better acquaintance with the subject and know- 

 ledge, the results of experiments by others, would 

 readily dissipate. If, as has been ascertained by 

 close and accurate observation, no soil can be made 

 permanently fertile where calcareous matter is not 

 present ; it must be applied to no inconsiderable 

 portion of our lands. The best mode of its appli- 

 cation, tlie quantities in which, and the seaions at 

 which it can be most advantageously used, experi- 

 ence alone can determine ; it may turn out after all 

 that very little depends upon the mode or time of 

 application — that all its purposes will be answered, 

 if its deficiencies be supplied. 



The lands of England are dressed with one or 

 two hundred bushels to the acre, applied in inter- 

 vals of eight or ten years ; those of France with 

 forty or fifty bushels every other year, and the re- 

 sults, in both cases, are substantially the same. By 

 us it has principally been used in compost, and in 

 that form has invariably succeeded where the soil 

 had not been previously sufficiently charged with 

 it, and where it has been accompanied with a due 

 amount of putrescent matter. 



It is true that its appropriate functions in the 

 economy of vegetation, the precise manner in which 

 it acts, are not as well understood as that of vege- 

 table and animal matter used as a manure, nor need 

 it be for all useful and practical purposes. It may 

 be n:ore properly left to the chemist and philoso- 

 pher to find out whether its effects are produced by 

 its centering into the composition of tlie plant and 

 becoming a portion of its organic structure, or pre- 

 paring other substances for their reception by living 

 vegetable organs, or by stimulating those organs to 

 earnest and vigorous activity, or by the co-opera- 

 tion of all these causes. 



The circumstance wliich renders the recently 

 discovered marls of this county more interesting, 

 in an agricultural respect, than they otherwise might 

 be, is the difficulty and expense with which our 

 lime stone is rendered available ; owing either to 

 their texture or composition, great and long continued 

 heat is required to reduce them to a calcined state. 



The cost of tlie fuel, necessary to reduce it to 

 powder, is the formidable item of charge in the ac- 

 count ; this is continually increasing. The large 

 demands made upon our forests by the iron manu- 

 factories and other processes in the arts requiring 

 the application of heat, will diminish the amount 

 and enhance the value of fuel, unless prevented by 

 its introduction from abroad, or by wiser methods 

 of renovation than yet have been employed. Could 

 lime be burned at less than one cent a bushel, and 

 sold at the kilns for 6 1-4 cents a bushel, as is the 

 case at Barmgat, ■according to the last report of 

 the Geological Surveyor of the State of New York, 

 there might be less necessity for looking to our 

 marl beds for the calcareous matter required in the 

 operations of husbandry — still lime in its quick or 

 caustic state, will always be required in certain 

 processes of agriculture. Ligneous fibrous roots, 

 hard vegetable substances, and consolidated peats 

 upon which atmospheric agents and the usual sol- 

 vents produce no impression, are readily broken 

 down and rendered soluble and useful by its action. 

 It prepares for immediate use without diminishing 

 essentially their efficacy unfermented manures, but 

 it destroys the living fibre unless used with inter- 

 mixtures which will modify its action ; it must 

 therefore be used with a cautious regard as well to 

 its deleterious as to its beneficial operations. Not 

 so with marl or lime in its effete state, it has never 

 been known to injure the growing plant e.xcept 

 when used in excess, or without a proper regard to 

 its appropriate admixture with the aliments of 

 plants. It expels those fell acids from the earth 

 which eradicate the nutritious and useful grasses 

 and introduce sorrel, mullein ind other sour and 

 useless herbage. It hastens tlie decomposition of 

 that portion of the food of vegetables which is of 

 difficult solution, and upon which the other decom- 

 posing agents act too slowly if at all, and it ameli- 

 orates and modifies the texture of the soil by loos- 

 ening it when too compact for the free penetration 

 of the rootlets and by rendering adhesive when too 

 loose to retain the requisite quantity of moisture. 

 That these are some of its effects has been proved 

 by experiments so careful and oft repeated that no 

 room is left for doubt. Extensive tracts of culti- 

 vable hinds, in this county, are faulty, ehher be- 

 cause too aluminous and compact to be readily 

 permeable by water, or too sandy and loose to re- 

 tain either the moisture or the manures which may 

 be put upon them for any considerable period. If 

 ' the season be too wet the Eastern HilU do not pro- 

 duce their usual quantity or quality of grass. If 

 too dry, the silicious plains of Sheffield fail to fur- 

 nish their expected returns That both may be cor- 

 rected by lime in some one of its forms, and the 

 last by marls of the precise character found among 

 us, there can be no question. The wonderful 

 changes which have been wrought in the agricul- 

 ture of some of the Middle and Southern States by 

 the use of this fossil— the luxuriant harvests gath- 

 ered from fields originally barren, or rendered so 

 by unskilful, improvident management — the extir- 

 pation of weeds, \\ hich either had rendered foul or 



