THE JOURNAL 



18 StP. OF THE 



BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Vol. XIII. No. 6. 

 SEPTEMBER, 1906. 



HOW LONG DOES LIME LAST IN THE SOIL? 



The practice of liming or chalking the soil is one of the 

 oldest and most widely-spread operations of British, agriculture ; 

 unfortunately, it is a custom that is less observed at the present 

 time than probably at any other period since farming became 

 an organized industry. The value of lime was familiar to the 

 Romans, its use persisted through the Dark Ages and it is men- 

 tioned in the mediaeval treatises on agriculture, while from the 

 sixteenth century onwards, coincidently with the growth of en- 

 closures and the passing of the land into private hands, it became 

 one of the indispensable acts of cultivation in this country. The 

 eighteenth century writers down to the time of Arthur Young 

 tell us how much the application of lime or chalk was part of 

 the ordinary routine of the farm, and the same fact might be 

 inferred from the numbers of decayed lime-kilns which 

 are to be found all over the countr}^, practically on every 

 farm where a bed of limestone or chalk lies near enough 

 to the surface to admit of digging it. Wherever the 

 rock is hard, a limestone, it miust be quarried and burnt to 

 lime, but in many parts of the country softer beds of marl 

 or chalk exist which can be applied directl}^ to the land ; the 

 action being similar to, though more slow than, that of the 

 burnt lime. In this part of Hertfordshire, where the soil con- 

 sists of a stiff loam, almost a clay, of varying depths but pro- 

 bably averaging ten feet, and then resting upon the chalk rock, 

 it has always been the custom to " chalk " the land. This was 

 formerly done by sinking bell pits through the clay to the chalk 



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