CARBONATE OF LIME. 111 
indeed with nine-tenths of the farms of America:-the 
fertility is so low that any hope of profitable agri- 
culture thereon must first be based upon a stern and 
inflexible determination to build the soils and make 
them rich. It is a great thought then that we have 
here, that soils filled with carbonate of lime naturally 
grow rich of themselves if planted with leguminous 
crops, or even left in a state of nature, and that 
upon these soils stored abundantly with lime almost 
any degree of fertility may be built. And what 
other function has lime in the soil? We need not 
stop here to discuss its power to floculate and ren- 
der more porous the soil, its ability to bind together 
sands, and so on. Perhaps that power of lime has 
been exaggerated, but this is true, soils rich in car- 
bonate of lime are almost universally rich also in 
phosphorus. This arises from two causes, one that 
lime carbonates usually carry a percentage of phos- 
phorus in their own composition; the other, that. 
they prevent the-waste of phosphorus by its leach- 
ing away, or its uniting in insoluble compounds with 
iron or alumina. 
Lime the Basis—To put it short, you cannot build 
a soil rich in either nitrogen phosphorus or prob- 
ably potash unless it is first rich in carbonate of 
lime. There is here a great field for thought. Hil- 
gard says that no great and enduring civilization 
has ever been built upon an acid soil. This seems 
true. Babylon stood on an alkaline plain rich in 
lime, Egypt’s soils are reputed rich in lime, Greece 
was built upon marble hills, Rome upon limestone, 
