148 Review of Essays on Calcareous Manures. 



the valley of Virginia to North Carolina ; for in the last named state 

 we noticed a contrast even stronger than the one we have stated. 

 After traveling for many miles through wastes of old fields, we en- 

 tered the German settlement of Salem, which, without any percepti- 

 ble change in the original character of the soil, presented the rich 

 appearance of Pennsylvania. 



In the foregoing statement, we have not included the settlers of 

 the Dutch province of the New Netherlands, not because they 

 brought with them little agricultural skill, but because their example 

 has been of little influence upon the present agriculture of the United 

 States. It is, however, but justice to them to mention, that many of 

 them being Protestants, expelled from the southern Netherlands by 

 the persecutions of the Spanish crown, the modes, implements, and 

 practice of husbandry which they introduced, were the very best 

 which then existed, and that although part of these were necessarily 

 abandoned under the new circumstances in which they were placed, 

 their implements in particular were superior, if applied to light soils, 

 such as those of their native Brabant, to any brought to America by 

 other races. Long Island, to which these were well fitted, bore, in 

 consequence, previous to the Revolution, the well merited epithet of 

 the garden of the colonies. But the Flemish, Walloon, and Frisian 

 blood was not excited by the same inventive spirit as the Anglo- 

 Norman, and unable to accommodate themselves to new circumstan- 

 ces, the Dutch settlers of rocky and rugged districts fell behind the 

 New England yeomanry in agricultural skill. 



We have called the use of lime a secret ; it was not only so to 

 the practical farmer, but to the man of science ; for even the re- 

 searches of Davy, who was well aware of its importance, have not 

 completed the theory of its action. It is, therefore, with no small 

 pride, that we can refer to a countryman of our own, as having fin- 

 ished what the most acute researches of European chemists had 

 left unaccomplished. This credit is due to Mr. Ruffin, and with 

 him as a guide, and with some little aid from the article of which he 

 is the translator, we shall endeavor to exhibit, in a succinct form, the 

 theory of calcareous manures. 



In order to make this complete, we shall be compelled to state 

 facts, which to the majority of the readers of this Journal will ap- 

 pear trite and hacknied. As our main object, however, is to call to 

 this subject the attention of intelligent farmers, who may not recol- 

 lect familiarly the elements of science, our more learned readers 



