98 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
may be conceived that the quantity of lime ought also to be increased 
with the annual quantity of rain that falls—because in proportion to 
that quantity ought the openness of the soil, and its fitness for drain¬ 
ing, to be extended. 
Nevertheless, the practices of the departments of the North and of 
La Sarthe seem to indicate the average dressing which suits in general 
for land : thus the liming of the North, which every ten or twelve years 
gives to the soil 40 hectolitres of lime to the hectare, or a litlemore 
than three hectolitres a year, agrees with that cf La Sarthe, which 
gives eight or ten hectolitres every three years. The first plan gives 
at one dressing what the other distributes at four: as both make a like 
average, it may be thence inferred that the earth demands annually 
three hectolitres, [323 bushels to the acre,] to sustain its fecundity. 
But as neither the soil nor the plants consume all this quantity of lime, 
it is to be believed, that, at the end of a greater or less length of time, 
the soil will have received enough to have no more need of it for a cer¬ 
tain space of time. 
MANNER OF TREATING LIMED LANDS. 
25. After having, by liming, given the soil a great productive power, 
having put it in condition to produce the most valuable crops, which 
are often also most exhausting, it is necessary to husband these re¬ 
sources—to give manure in return for the products obtained—to em¬ 
ploy as litter, and not as food, the straw, now increased by one half— 
to raise grass crops from the soil now fitted to bear them to advantage 
—in short, to modify the general plan, and the detail of the culture ac¬ 
cording to the new powers of the soil, the prices of commodities, and 
to local conveniences. 
However, it is not necessary to hurry the change of the rotation. 
Such an operation is long, difficult, very expensive, and ought not to 
be executed but with deliberation. 
EFFECTS OF LIME ON THE SOIL. 
26. The effects of lime, although similar to, are not identical with, 
those produced by marl; and the qualities of soils limed, differ in some 
points from those of natural calcareous soils. The grain from limed 
land is rounder, firmer, gives less bran, and more Hour, than that from 
marled land: the grain of marled land is more gray, gives more bran 
and resembles that made upon clover, though it may be preferable to 
the latter. The grain of a limed soil is more like that from land im¬ 
proved with drawn ashes. Limed land is less exposed to danger from 
drought than marled land, on soils naturally calcareous. The crop is 
not subject to be lodged at flowering time, when the sowing was done 
in dry earth. 
27. In limed earth, weeds and insects disappear. The earth, if too 
light, acquires stiffness, and is lightened if too clayey. The surface of 
the argilo-silicious soil, before close and whitish, is made friable, and 
becomes reddish, as if rotten: it hardens and splits with drought, and is 
dissolved by the rains which succeed, This spontaneous loosening of 
the soil facilitates greatly the labor of the cultivator, the movement of 
the roots of the growing plants, and the reciprocal action of the at¬ 
mosphere upon the soil, which remains open to its influence. 
All these new properties which the limed soil has acquired, doubt¬ 
less explain in part the fertilizing means which calcareous agents bring 
to the soil: but we think it is still necessary to seek some of these cau¬ 
ses elsewhere. 
28. Lime, according to the recent discoveries of German chemists, 
seizes in the soil the soluble humus or humic acid, takes it from all 
other bases, and forms a compound but slightly soluble, which appears, 
under this form, eminently suitable to the wants of plants. But as 
this compound is not soluble in less than 2,000 times its weight of wa¬ 
ter, while without the lime the humus is soluble in a volume of water 
less by one-half, it would follow that, in consequence of lime, the con¬ 
sumption of this substance, and productive power of the soil would, 
in like proportion, be better preserved. Since the products of the soil 
increase much from the liming, while the humus is economised, since 
these products borrow very little from the soil, which remains more fer¬ 
tile while thus yielding greater products, it follows that the principal 
action of the lime consists, at first, in augmenting, in the soil and in 
the plants, the means of drawing from the atmosphere the vegetable 
principles which they find there; and next, in aiding, according to the 
need, the formation, in the soil or the plants, the substances which en¬ 
ter into the composition of plants, and which are not met with ready 
formed either in the atmosphere or in the soil. 
The researches upon these various points are curious, important, 
interesting to practice as well as to science—and will lead us to ex¬ 
plain, by means not yet appreciated, the action of lime upon vegeta¬ 
tion. 
ABSORPTION BV PLANTS OF THE PRINCIPLES OF THE ATMOSPHERE, 
IN THE VEGETATION ON UNCULTURED SOILS. 
_ 29. Saussure has concluded, from his experiments, that plants de¬ 
rive from the soil about one-twentieth of their substance; and the ex¬ 
periments of Van Helmont and of Boyle have proved that considera¬ 
ble vegetable products diminish very little the mass of the 6oil. But 
this fact is still better proved by the observation of what passes in un¬ 
cultivated soils. 
Woodland that is cut over in regular succession, ( taillvi ) produces 
almost indefinitely, without being exhausted, and even becoming rich¬ 
er, the mass of vegetable products which man gathers and removes, 
and of which the soil does not contain the principles. If, instead of 
woodland thus partially and successively cut over, we consider upon 
the same soil a succession of forests, and, for greater ease of estima¬ 
tion, resinous forests, we find from the products of the generation of an 
age, forty to fifty thousand cubic feet to the hectare. This product is 
less than that of the resinous forests of many parts of the country, and 
yet it is nearly equal in bulk to half of the layer of the productive soil 
itself; it represents an annual increase of 24,000 weight of wood to the 
hectare—and which is produced not only without impoverishing, but 
even while enriching the soil, by an enormous quantity of droppings 
and remains of all kinds. 
These products which do not come from the soil, are then drawn from 
the atmosphere, in which plants gather them by means of particular 
organs designed for that use. These organs are the myriads of leaves 
which large vegetables bear—aerial roots, which gather these princi¬ 
ples either ready formed in theair, orwhich takeup there the elements, 
to combine them by means of vegetable power. But these aerial roots 
exert quite a different and superior energy in gathering the constituent 
principles of plants in the atmosphere, to that of the roots in the 
ground—since the former furnish nearly the whole amount of the ve¬ 
getable mass, while the latter draw but very little from the soil. 
30. Plants may well find in the atmosphere the greater part of the 
volatile principles which compose them—the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, 
and azote. But it is not so easily seen whence they obtain the fixed 
principles of which their ashes are composed. These products could 
not exist ready formed in the soil—for the saline principles contained 
in the ashes of a generation of great trees, which would amount to 
more than 25,000 weight to the hectare, would have rendered the soil 
absolutely barren, since, according to the experiments of M. Lecoq of 
Clermont, the twentieth part of this quantity is enough to make a soil 
sterile. We would find a similar result in accumulating the successive 
products cf an acre of good meadow. It is then completely proved 
that the saline principles of plants do not exist ready formed in the soil. 
They are no more formed in the atmosphere, or in the analyses of che¬ 
mists would have found them there. However, as the intimate com¬ 
position of these substances is not yet perfectly known, their elements 
may exist in the atmosphere, or even in the soil, among the substan¬ 
ces which compose them. 
Neither can it be said that these salts may be derived from the ato¬ 
mic dust which floats in the air; for this dust is composed of fragments 
organic and inorganic, carried especially to the plants themselves, and 
then, in estimating this atomic matter at the most, we will scarcely find 
in it the hundredth part of the saline substances contained in the vege¬ 
table mass produced. We ought then to conclude that the saline sub¬ 
stances of plants are formed by the powers of vegetation or of the soil. 
31. In like manner as with the saline principles, the lime and the 
phosphates which are formed in ashes ought to be due to the same for¬ 
ces, whether the roots take up their unperceived elements in the soil, 
or the leaves gather them in the atmosphere. This consequence re¬ 
sults evidently from this fact—that plants grown in soils, of which the 
analysis shows neither lime nor the phosphates, contain them notwith¬ 
standing in large proportion in their fixed principles—of which [or of 
the ashes] they often compose half the mass. 
THE SHEEP .—(Continued from page 83.) 
PASTURE. 
Pasture has a far greater influence on the fineness of the fleece. The 
staple of the wool, like every other part of the sheep, must increase 
in length or in bulk when the animal has a superabundance of nutri¬ 
ment; and, on the other hand, the secretion which forms the wool 
must decrease like every other, when sufficient nourishment is not af¬ 
forded. 
When little cold has been experienced in the winter, and vegetation 
has been scarcely checked, the sheep yields an abundant crop of wool, 
but the fleece is perceptibly coarser as well as heavier. When the 
frost has been severe and the ground long covered with snow—if the 
flock has been fairly supplied with nutriment, although the fleece may 
have lost a little in weight, it will have acquired a superior degree of 
fineness, and a proportionable increase of value. Should, however, the 
sheep have been neglected and starved during this prolongation of cold 
weather, the fleece as well as the carcass is thinner, and although it 
may have preserved its smallness of filament, it has lost weight, and 
strength, and usefulness. These are self-evident facts, and need not 
to be enforced by any labored argument; and therefore it is that since, 
the sheep-breeder, living in a populous country, has begun, and judi¬ 
ciously so, to look more to the profit to be derived from the carcass— 
since the system of artificial feeding has been brought to so great per¬ 
fection—and a larger and better animal has been earlier sent to market, 
