No. 275. 1 155 
quaint our agriculturists with the amount of its cost, and to admonish 
them to look among their own resources for mineral manures. During 
the present season, exclusive of that sent up the Delaware and Hudson 
canal, there have been sold in the county 5,200 tons of plaster in the 
stone, at the average price of $5.50 per ton; to this must be added 
$2.50 per ton for grinding and transport, and we have the sum of 
$41,600 as the annual amount paid by the farmers of the county for 
mineral manure. 
A great part of this sum might be retained in the county, if farmers 
would turn their attention to their own mineral resources. Their lime- 
stones, marls and bog earth, or vegetable matter of our bogs and 
swamps, and marly clay, furnish inexhaustible supplies of the best ma- 
nure, adapted to all kinds of soil and culture. 
Marl exists in almost and perhaps every town in the county, and 
every land-holder can soon ascertain whether he has it upon his land, 
without the cost of a dollar; for in this county it lies naked^ or covered 
by water, or bog earth and peat. He has only to open a space a foot 
or two square with a spade, through the black earth, and if it exist, it 
will be found at the bottom. It has not been much used as a manure 
up to this period. The few trials made have generally been unfavora- 
ble, and from the very circumstance of all others which should have re- 
commended its continuance. Marl, where the trials have been made, 
was so cheap, and so easily got and put on the land, that too great a 
quantity was used, and all vegetation thereby destroyed, as effectually 
as if too much quick lime had been used. A field was pointed out to 
me by an intelligent farmer, where marl had been applied twenty-nine 
years ago. The field is now in grass, and the boundaries over which 
marl was spread are still as visible as if a plough had been drawn around 
it; too much was used, and nothing would grow on it for many years, 
but within the last few years, corn and wheat have grown and yielded 
bountifully; but there is yet too much lime for grass, which is thin and 
sickly: nevertheless, this trial, although a failure, speaks volumes to 
the farmer; it proves how small a quantity answers without renewing. 
Some of our marls are very strong, and it is believed would burn into 
good quick lime; some are full of shells, and some are nearly destitute 
of them. 
Another of our mineral manures is lime; it is only beginning to at- 
tract notice for this purpose. When the cost of wood for burning lime 
