No. 200.] 
141 
liberal expenditures. The soil is naturally very poor on the plains, but 
those parts which are well cultivated have become very productive. 
Street manure, yard manure, composts, mixed with lime, rotted sea- 
weed, on which hogs and cattle are yarded, ashes, barilla, bone manure, 
and fish, are those in common use. Street manure probably exceeds all 
the others in quantity, and the bays and inlets on the coast, together 
with the Long Island rail-road, offer great facilities for its transport into 
the interior of the island. The marsh mud, and " muck" of the mea- 
dow, and the estuary mud, would make a valuable manure on the light 
soils. Lime answers w^cll on the light soils of Long Island and New- 
Jersey; and as it can be purchased at so low a rate at Barnegat, (viz. 
6 J cents per bushel) the farmers will find their advantage in using it on 
their lands. It should be put in heaps on the land, and suffered to lie 
some months, to air slake thoroughly, and then spread with other ma- 
nure. Experience must determine the quantity best adapted to each 
particular soil. It is now extensively used in New- Jersey, on soils si- 
milar to those of Long Island.* 
The astringent pyritous clay of Rossville, in Richmond county, and 
of West Neck, in Suffolk county, might be employed with advantage 
on light soils, if used in moderate quantities and mixed with lime 
enough to decompose the sulphate of iron, formed by the decomposition 
of the pyrites. 
The clay at Rossville is more pyritous than that of West Neck, and 
would require much more time. The sulphate of iron, formed by ex- 
posing these clays to the weather, would tend to destroy vegetation. 
Lime is useful when mixed with it, not only to prevent its noxious ef- 
fects, but the acid of the sulphate of iron, by combining with the lime, 
forms the sulphate of lime, or gypsum, which is so extensively used as 
* The use of lime is extending very rapidly in New-Jersey and Pennsylvania, and has al- 
most replaced the use of plaster in some of the counties. *' Individuals in the vicinity of AI- 
lentown employ from 600 to 3,000 bushels of lime per year, according to the dimensions of 
their estates. It is carted from 20 to 30 miles, in some instances." " The quantity per acre 
varies, from 30 to 100 bushels, according to the strength of the soil — the largest quantity being 
used where the land is richest in vegetable and animal matter. The dressing is administered 
in from five to twelve years. Where the soil is thin, it is necessary to plough in the lime the 
deeper. It is always added in the slaked state, and generally in the fall of the year. After 
liming, a crop of buckwheat, oats or corn, is taken off, previous to one of wheat."t In Eu- 
rope, the lime is always allowed to air slake before it is spread. Where lands are highly li- 
med, (and sometimes 200 bushels are used to the acre in England) it is done only once in a 
term of twenty-one yeard. In some parts of France, a dressing of only 12 bushels is employ- 
ed, and this is repeated every third year. Mr. Pulvis, who has done much in investigating the 
subject of calcareous manures, thinks this the least expensive and best; and as lime is so cheap 
on the Hudson, it must be an economical manure. " The advantage of the use of lime may 
be stated in a few words: it is an essential part of the seed of wheat, and that valuable grain 
w ill not grow in any soil which does not contain it."; 
It may be well to remark in this place, that limestones containing magnesia will not make a 
lime suitable for manure, however valuable it may be for cement. Farmers should be careful 
on this point, else they may fail in the use of lime, and infer that it is not adapted to their soil, 
t Shepard's Min. Report of Con. p. 115. $ Ibid, p. 116, 
