128 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. 
using lime in the soil. Some day, soon let us hope, 
there will be thousands of machines busily at work 
grinding up the raw limestone rocks, which fortu- 
nately are plentiful enough in America, and farmers 
will be busy spreading this sweetening powder 
broadcast over their land. 
Distributing Lime—I have found some difficulty 
in distributing limes. Spreaders there are, but 
usually they do not apply it nearly fast enough. 
There will be machines devised that will apply as 
much as one wishes, up to ten tons to the acre, no 
doubt. At present the manure spreader seems as 
satisfactory as anything available for spreading 
ground limestone. 
Quantity of Lime——How much should be used on 
an acre? It is difficult to say. The art of lim- 
ing is too new in America, especially with carbonate 
of lime, ground limestone, to give us much data. We 
can only guess. The writer has known of remark- 
able results from use of as little as three tons per 
acre of ground limestone. This seems an infinitesi- 
mal amount when one considers the 2,000 tons of soil 
in the top foot of an acre. Take that acre apart, 
there are 160 square rods in it. Supposing one were 
asked to lime one square rod sufficiently to sweeten 
it well, using the inert ground limestone, how much 
would he naturally put in? Most sensible men would 
put in at least 500 pounds, supposing cost was not 
considered. That would make forty tons to the 
acre, and we cannot afford that now; there are too 
many acres to be limed. But we can afford 100 
