126 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. 
Mr. Stephenson also grew lucerne, and when he 
wished to sow down land to grass for a permanent 
pasture, sowed the grass seed in the lucerne field, 
finding that the seed took well there (as we have all 
learned, oftimes to our sorrow), and that the lucerne 
or alfalfa furnished good pasturage till the other 
seeds came on. 
I have mentioned these foreign uses of carbonate 
of lime because agriculture is so recent in America 
that we have not much precedent to which to refer, 
and agricultural practice abroad is the result of 
experiences of the fathers for centuries back . What- 
ever one finds them doing over there he may feel 
pretty certain has been well tried and tested. In 
Scotland I have seen heath land reclaimed and made 
into farming land. The process there was to first 
drain the wet, sour slopes, then lime them with about 
thirty tons to the acre of lime, the raw carbonate of 
lime being used, if I remember correctly, and after 
that manure was used; then clovers, turnips, oats, 
grass or any good thing that the climate. would 
grow. 
New Work.—It is rather a new work, this use of 
carbonate of lime or raw ground limestone in Amer- 
ica. A few years ago nothing could be done except 
to dig marls out of the earth where they were to be 
found, and as these marls were nearly always 
under water not much of this has been done. With 
the increase in use of concrete construction came 
eall for crushed limestone. Railways asked also 
for crushed limestone for ballast material. Crush- 
