116 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
had been used, because the operation of the latter acting upon the 
dung renders every portion of it useful. 
Clay land, shows an evident disposition to combine with lime, and 
it bears the repetition of this species of amelioration better than 
lighter soils. When applied to heavy tillage land, either for the pur¬ 
pose of reducing its cohesive properties, or of supplying an addition¬ 
al quantity of calcareous matter, small dressings of lime will have 
but little effect; and if sand or calcareous earths are to be employ¬ 
ed, it is recommended, by a practical farmer of known experience, as 
more economical to apply them separately than as a compost. It 
powerfully assists all adhesive soils; and when laid hot from the 
kiln upon deep clay, it has been known to occasion a very large in¬ 
crease in the following crops. It has also been often observed, in fal¬ 
lowing clayey soils, “that, in wet weather, when a dose of lime has 
been just given, the land continues more friable, and is less apt to 
bind up on the recurrence of drought, than where it has been ne¬ 
glected. The grain growing on the well-limed ground preserves its 
healthy appearance in wet seasons, while that growing on land that 
has not been limed is yellow and sickly.” 
Upon sandy soils, which seldom abound much in vegetable matter, 
lime has a mechanical operation, which, by combining with the finer 
particles of the soil, gives consistence to the staple of the land, and 
attracting the moisture from the atmosphere, it imparts it so gradu¬ 
ally as to be less liable to be hurt by drought in those parching sea¬ 
sons by which crops are injured. It is therefore said to be cooling 
to hot land ; but if it be not also mixed with some portion of clay, 
with which it may combine, it then is apt to unite itself with the 
sand, with which itcomposes akind of mortar, the effect of which has 
been already described, and which cannot be dissolved without much 
difficulty, and the plough often brings hard lumps to the surface of 
the soil which cannot be easily broken. Th.us when such land has 
been frequently limed, nothing can restore it but the abundant and 
reiterated application of putrescent manure; the demonstration of 
which is perceptible throughout many parts of England, where, from 
possessing a chalky soil without strength to maintain a sufficiency 
of live stock to furnish dung, the land has in many places been worn 
out through the inconsiderate use of lime. 
On the exhaustion of land by the application of lime there is, how¬ 
ever, much difference of opinion. It is indeed evident that the con¬ 
tinuation of cropping, without, an addition of nutritive manure, will 
ultimately exhaust the best soils; but though their natural fertility 
be thus aided, it yet cannot depend entirely on that support. This 
must be apparent if we reflect that land, without any addition of 
animal or vegetable substance, will still produce crops; for pure 
sand, clay, and chalk, though each in themselves separately barren, 
yet, when mixed together, exert chemical influences upon each other, 
which, by the attraction of the air, the dews, and the rain, the force 
of the sun, and the generative powers of growing vegetables, effect 
the production of corn and fruit. It is therefore clear that the land 
alone is capable of vegetation ; but every day’s experience proves, 
that the amount of its products, its fertility, in short, depends in a 
great degree upon the decomposition of the substances which have 
been previously converted into vegetable mould, or which are added 
to it by manure. Any thing whatever may be called manure which, 
when applied to the soil, either rectifies its mechanical defects, cor¬ 
rects any bad quality, and either stimulates it to yield, or stores it 
with nutriment. Thus, if lime be laid upon pure sand, although the 
latter would be rendered more tenacious, and would thereby be¬ 
come more favorable to the germination of vegetables, yet seeds 
could find no nourishment from either the lime or the sand, and pu¬ 
trescent manure would still be necessary to produce a crop. But if 
the soil consists of clay and sand, containing animal or vegetable 
matter in a torpid state of decay, then lime would be preferable to 
dung. The state of the soil should therefore be minutely inquired 
into before lime is employed, and it should be only used to give ef¬ 
fect to the inert substances with which it may be combined. 
By the analysis of soils, we find that all productive earth contains 
a certain portion of lime ; and although we learn from experience 
that its stimulative powers upon the roots of plants are very great, 
yet we are but imperfectly acquainted with the extent or the exact 
manner in which its influence is brought into action, and “ we are in 
a great measure ignorant of the actual changes that are produced 
upon the earth after this manure has been applied.” It would, how¬ 
ever, seem that, where it exhausts, it is only by hastening the pu¬ 
trefaction of the animal and vegetable matter in the soil, and by that 
means applying a larger portion of those substances in a given time 
than could be otherwise afforded to the growth of plants. It is thus 
known to produce more luxuriant crops, and it will also consequent¬ 
ly enable the farmer to continue his land in tillage, during a certain 
time, with more effect than if no calcareous manure had been laid 
on ; but, although it may not tend to the deterioration of the origi¬ 
nal staple of the soil, it can hardly be doubted that it must be thus 
more promptly deprived of its fertility than if the exhaustion of that 
vegetable mould with which it had been supplied by nutritive ma¬ 
nure were occasioned by a more gradual process of decomposi¬ 
tion. 
That this is the only way in which effete lime can exhaust land, 
seems probable from the large quantities of neutralized calcareous 
earth which are often applied without any bad effects in the form of 
chalk, shells, limestone-gravel, and the whole tribe of marls. A 
larger quantity of these is oftener laid on in one year than would be 
used of lime in half a century, were the land in tillage to be manag¬ 
ed according to the custom of some countries ; yet it is not general¬ 
ly impoverished, and, in many cases, it is permanently improved.— 
This, however, is probably occasioned by its combination with other 
substances, which either counteract its exhausting powers or supply 
the waste of nutritive matter. 
The employment of lime seems to be of the greatest service in 
the breaking up of fresh and coarse land, on which it acts more pow¬ 
erfully than on soil which has been long in cultivation, and indeed 
the most striking improvements have been effected by its means on 
moorlands and mountain ; but it should be given for the first time 
abundantly. Such is the usual effect of lime upon arable; upon 
grass-land it is laid in smaller quantities; and in this top-dressing, 
perhaps the preferable mode is to apply it in a compost with earth; 
except when the soil consists of clay. When thus spread upon the 
surface, its action upon the sward is productive of the most palpable 
improvement, and continues perceptible during a long period. No 
other manure will create so rapid a change ; for it is such an excel¬ 
lent corrector of acidity, that it tends to produce the sweetest herb¬ 
age where only the most unpalatable pasture was formerly to be 
found. This, indeed, is so apparent, that if a handful of lime be 
thrown upon a tuft of rank, sour grass, which has in former years 
been invariably refused by cattle, they will afterwards eat it close 
down. Now, animal dung, when dropped upon coarse benty sward, 
produces little or no improvement until limed ; it then, however, not 
only augments the crops, but the finer grasses continue in posses¬ 
sion of the soil, and the land is then doubly benefitted; for the dung 
dropped by the stock on which it is pastured, is both increased in 
quantity, and improved in quality.* Farmers should never consider 
lime as the food or nourishment of plants, but as an alterative of the 
soil; never to be used but when nature requires it, either to dissolve 
noxious combinations, or to form new ones; to bind loose soils, or 
to diminish excessive cohesion; and to reduce the inactive vegeta¬ 
ble fibre into a fertile mould. For such purposes there is not, per¬ 
haps, a more valuable article in the whole catalogue of agricultural 
remedies ; but some farmers, who do not reflect upon the subject, 
when they perceive that lime has once excited the dormant powers 
of the soil into action, and that good crops succeed for a few years, 
are apt to draw from thence very false conclusions, and continue 
liming and tilling without the assistance of putrescent manure, until 
then-land at length is rendered incapable of the production of corn. 
It has indeed been peitinently observed by a good judge of such mat¬ 
ters, “that there is an analogy between the treatment suitable to 
the animal and vegetable creation. When medicines have removed 
the cause of their application, they are discontinued, and the pa¬ 
tient, rendered weaker by the application, requires some invigorating 
aliment; in like manner, some time after an effectual liming, the so¬ 
luble carbon of the rotten dung, or some such restorative, should be 
applied to the soil to replenish it with what it may have been robbed 
of by the action of the lime.” 
In fine, lime should always precede putrescent manures when 
breaking up old leys for cultivation, for, if the land contains acids, 
or noxious matter that is poisonous to plants, they will be decom¬ 
posed and rendered fit for vegetation ; and hence the superiority of 
lime to dung on new lands. But calcareous and putrescent manures 
* In Derbyshire the farmers have found that, by spreading lime in consider¬ 
able quantities upon the surface of their heathy moors, after a few times the 
heath disappears, and the whole surface becomes covered with a fine pile of 
grass, consisting of white clover and the other valuable sorts of pasture-grasses. 
—Anderson’s Essays, 4th edit. vol. i. p. 527. Survey of Derby, voT. ii. p. 
437; and of Westmoreland p. 235. 
