208 Transactions.—Miscellaneous. 
they would be retained if these substances were not made to enter into 
combination with lime. . 
Lime has been employed as a fertilizer from a very remote period: both 
Cato and Pliny attest the use of it by the Roman cultivators. 
The chemical uses of lime to vegetation may be divided into two parts : 
first, its direct action on vegetable matter ; secondly, its chemical operation 
on the matters contained in all cultivatable soils. In its direct action as a 
food, or constituent for plants, its uses are of the greatest importance, for 
hardly a single plant has yet been analyzed in which the presence of lime 
has not been detected, in combination with an acid. It is found in the 
commonly cultivated crops of the farmer in very varying proportions : 
thus the ashes of the oat plant contain more than five cent. of lime. In 
two pounds weight of the seeds of wheat are found about 12 grains of car- 
bonate of lime; in the same quantity of rye, about 18:4 grains; in barley, 
24-8 grains ; 83°75 grains in the oat; and 46:2 in the same quantity of rye 
straw. It abounds also, with magnesia, in the wood of trees. The ashes of 
the oak contain about 82 per cent. of earthy carbonates ; those from the 
poplar, 27 per cent. ; of the mulberry, 56 percent. The proportion of lime 
found in plants varies with the composition of the soil on which they are 
produced. There are very few soils fit for cultivation from which this earth 
is entirely absent; and its addition is found by the farmer to promote the 
fertility of most barren lands. The attraction of lime for the aqueous par- 
ticles of the atmosphere is considerable, and is, therefore, not without its 
uses in this respect to vegetation. 
The chemical action of lime is also very considerable: mixing with the 
heavy adhesive clays, it renders them much more friable, less liable to be 
injuriously acted upon by the sun, and much more readily permeable by the 
gases and vapour of the atmosphere. It renders them—the cultivator tells 
you—“ more easily workable.” And again, the action of lime upon the 
organic substances always more or less contained in the farmer’s soils, is very 
considerable. ^ This benefit is not merely confined to the vegetable remains 
in the land, but it extends with equal energy to the dead and the living 
animal matter with which, in a countless variety of forms, the land is 
tenanted. There are few substances more destructive to grub-worms, ani- 
malculæ, ete., than lime; and where these are destroyed by lime, the soil 
is, as a natural consequence, enriched by their remains. On soils which 
abound with sulphate of iron—which is commonly the case with those which 
contain an excess of peat—the action of lime is not only beneficial in de- 
composing or rendering soluble the mass of inert vegetable remains, but the 
lime decomposes the sulphate of iron, and, uniting with its sulphuric acid, 
forms the well-known fertilizer, the sulphate of lime, or gypsum, of com- 
merce. 
