THE CULTIVATOR. 
Miscellaneous. 
ON THE USE OF LIME AS A MANURE.— by m, rims. 
Translated fGr the Farmers’ Register from the Annates de V Agriculture Frart- 
caise, of 1835.—f Continued from page 14. j 
IMPORTANCE OF MANURES WHICH IMPROVE THE CONSTITUTION OF SOILS. 
The question of improving manures is of great interest to agricul¬ 
ture. This means of meliorating the soil is too little known, and 
above all, too little practised in a great part of France-and yet it is aj 
condition absolutely necessary to the agricultural prosperity of a coun- i 
try. In the neighborhood of great cities, alimentary manures being 
furnished on good terms, may well vivify the soil; but animal manures 
cannot suffice but in a few situations, and. of small extent—and in every 
Country where tillage is highly prosperous, improving manures are in 
use. The Department of the North (of France,) Belgium, and Eng¬ 
land, owe to them, in a great measure, their prosperity. The depart¬ 
ment of the North, (which is, of all Europe, the country where agri¬ 
culture is best practised, and the most productive,) spends every year, 
upon two-thirds of its soil, a million of francs in lime, marl, ashes of 
peat and of dead coal, [ houille;'] and it is principally to these agents,) 
and not to the quality of the soil, that the superiority of its production 
is owing. The best of its soil makes part of the same basin, is of the 
same formation, and same quality, as a great part of Artois and Pi¬ 
cardy, of which the products are scarcely equal to half the rate of the 
North. Neither is it the quantity of meadow land which causes its 
superiority; that makes but the fifth part of its extent, and Lille, the ; 
best Arrondissement, has scarcely a twentieth of its surface in mea¬ 
dow, while Avesne, the worst of all, has one-third. Nor can any 
great additional value be attributed to the artificial meadows, since 
they are not met with except in the twenty-sixth part of the whole 
space. Neither can this honor be due to the suppression of naked fal¬ 
lows, since in this country of patent husbandry, they yet take up one- 
sixth of the ploughed land every year. Finally, the Flemings have 
but one head of large cattle for every two hectares* of land, a pro-: 
portion exceeded in a great part of France. Their great products then 
are due to their excellent economy and use of manures, to the assidu¬ 
ous labor of the farmers, to courses of crops well arranged, but above! 
all, we think, to the improvers of soil, which they join to their ali-1 
mentary manures. Two-thirds of their land receive these regularly;, 
and it is to the reciprocal reaction of these two agents of melioration, i 
that appears to be due the uninterrupted succession of fecundity, which 
astonishes all those who are not accustomed continually to see the pro¬ 
ducts of this region. 
At this moment, upon all points in France, agriculture, after the ex¬ 
ample of the other arts of industry, is bringing forth improvements; 
in all parts especially, cultivators are trying, or wishing to try, lime, 
marl, ashes, animal black. It is this particular point in progress,- 
above all, for which light is wanting ; and this opinion has induced! 
the preparation of this publication. Since more than thirty years, thej 
author has devoted himself, from inclination, to agriculture; but he 
has been especially attentive to calcareous manures. He has studied j 
in the practice of much extent of country, in his own particularly, in 
personal experiments, and in what has been written on them both by I 
foreigners and countrymen. An Essay on Marl has been the first fruit 
of his labors; an Essay on the use of lime will soon be ready: it is| 
with these materials that he now sets himself to work. To prepare i 
for this object, a series of articles, of the nature of a recapitulation] 
rather than of a regular work, it was necessary to be concise, and yet 
not to omit anything essential. It is proper then that he should limit] 
himself to the prominent parts of his subject, those especially useful to 
practice. His advice will then be as often empirical as regular, and 
his directions will be precise, although supported by few developments. 
An extract from this work has appeared in the Encyclopedia Jlgri-[ 
cole: here it will again appear, but by separate articles, which will be 
corrected by a systematic general view of theory, founded on practice. 
This is the moment for multiplying publications on this subject, be 
cause that in almost all parts of France, it is the point in agriculture 
most controverted—that which induces the most labor and the greatest 
expenditures—which presents most doubts—and which has consequent¬ 
ly most need of being made clear. 
We shall not enlarge here upon the manner in which improving ma¬ 
nures act: we will put off this important question, with its develop¬ 
ments to the article on lime. Here we only present the theory. Here¬ 
after, that which we will hazard will be founded upon facts, and yet 
we will not promise these developments, but for the purpose of enlight¬ 
ening and directing practice. 
ON THE VARIOUS KINDS OF IMPROVING MANURES. 
The first in order, and the most important, are the calcareous ma¬ 
nures. We comprehend, under this name, lime, marl, old plastering 
mortar, and other rubbish of demolished buildings, beds of fossil shells, 
* The hectare is very nearly equal to 2) English (or American) acres. 
43 
[falunf\ or shelly substaUces, plaster or gypsum: experience and rea- 
son will prove that we ought to arrange in the same class, and by side 
of the others, wood ashes, ground bones, and burnt bones. We will 
not place in the same list, the ashes of peat, of dead coal, and red 
pyritous ashes : their effect is not owing to their lime, but (as will be 
seen afterwards,) rather to the effect of fire upon the earthy parts, and 
particularly upon the argil which they contain. 
We will next in order treat of manures of the sea, of saline manure 
of different kinds, of mixtures of earths, of calcined clay : and finally, 
of paring and burning the turf, and the different questions which peat 
presents in agriculture. 
OF LIMING—ON THE USE OF LIME FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF SOIL. 
1. Among the immense variety of substances, and of combinations 
which compose the upper layers of the globe, the earthy substances-, 
silex, alumine, and lime, form almost exclusively the surface soil: the 
greater portion of other substances being unfit to aid vegetation, they 
ought to be very rare, upon a surface where the Supreme Author will¬ 
ed to call forth and to preserve the millions of species of beings of all 
nature, which were to live on its products. 
It was also a great benefit to man, whose intelligence was to be ex¬ 
ercised upon the surface of the soil, to have so few in number the sub¬ 
stances proper to support vegetation. The art of agriculture, already 
so complex, Which receives from so many circumstances such diverse 
modifications, if there had been added new elements much more com* 
plicated, would have been above the reach of human intelligence. 
2. But among these substances, the two first, silex and alumine, form 
almost exclusively three-fourths of soils; the third, the carbonate of 
lime, is found more or less mixed in the other fourth ; all soils in which 
the latter earth is found, have similar characters, producing certain 
families of vegetables which cannot succeed in those in which it is not 
contained. 
The calcareous element seems to be in the soil a means and a princi¬ 
ple of friability. Soils which contain calcareous earth in suitable pro¬ 
portions, suffer but little from moisture, and let pass easily, to the 
lower beds, the superabundant water, and consequently drain them¬ 
selves with facility. Grain and leguminous crops, the oleaginous 
plants, and the greater part of the vegetables of commerce, succeed 
well on these soils. 
It is among these soils that almost all good lands are found. Never¬ 
theless, the abundance of the calcareous principle is more often injuri¬ 
ous than useful. Thus it is among soils composed principally of car* 
bonate of lime that we meet with the most arid and barren, as Lousy, 
Champagne, part of Yonne, and some parts of Berry. 
3. The analysis of the best soils has shown that they rarely contain 
beyond ten per cent of carbonate of lime; and those of the highest 
grade of quality seem to contain but from three to five per cent. Thus 
the analyses of Messrs. Berthier and Drapiez, show three per cent of it 
in the celebrated soil of the environs of Lille. 
4. But all these properties, all these advantages, all these products, 
calcareous manures bear with them to the soils which do not contain 
the calcareous principle. It is sufficient to spread them in very small 
proportions : a quantity of lime which does not exceed the thousandth 
part of the tilled surface layer of soil, a like proportion of drawn 
ashes, ora two-hundredth part, (or even less) of marl, are sufficient 
to modify the nature, change the products, and increase by one-half, 
the crops of a soil destitute of the calcareous principle. This princi¬ 
ple, then, is necessary to be furnished to those soils which do not con¬ 
tain it; it is then a kind of condiment disposed by nature to meliorate 
poor soils, and to give to them fertility. 
ANCIENT DATE OF THE USE OF LIME, 
5. Lime, as it appears, has long ago been used in many countries, 
However, nothing proves that its effect was well known to the Greeks 
and Romans, the then civilized portion of mankind. Their old agricul¬ 
tural writers do not speak of the use of lime on cultivated lands, nor 
on meadows. Pliny, the naturalist, tells us however, that it was in 
use for vines, for olives, and for cherry trees, the fruit of which it 
made more forward: and he speaks of its being used on the soil gene¬ 
rally in two provinces of Gaul, those of the Pictones and iEdui, whose 
fields lime rendered more fruitful. The agriculture of the barbarians 
was then, in this particular, more advanced than that of the Romans. 
After that, all trace of the use of lime in agriculture, is lost for a long 
time—whether that it had ceased to be used, or only that the notice of 
it was omitted by writers on agriculture. The trace is again recover¬ 
ed with Bernard Pallissay, who recommends the use of it in compost 
in moist lands, and speaks of his use of it in the Ardennes. Nearly a 
century later, Olivier de Serres, advises its employment in the same 
manner, and reports that they made use of it in the provinces of Guel* 
dres and Juliers [in Belgium.] He makes no mention of its use in 
France : but as the practices of agriculture were not then much brought 
together, and were but little known, it may be believed that at that 
time, Flanders, Belgium and Normandy made use of lime. 
I In England, liming seems to have been in use earlier and more ge* 
