The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1865-08-22 00:00:00

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MAN TYNES AND CROPS.

(Concluded.)

[The following are passages from one of a short oonrse
of hctures by Mr. Wallace Fyfe bafore the Royal
Agricultural College.]
LIMING. —No more extensive practice apart
from the ordinary routine of fertilisation is
known in agriculture than the application of
lime—and no wonder—its effects are marked, and
indeed marvellous. Sa great a stimulant is lime
that an overdose of it, as it is. called, is a well-
known method of raising scourging crops and
producing exhaustion and sterility in the soil.
I mentioned that Liebig designates one class of
plants as "lime plants." They are represented
by Lucerne, clover, beans, peas, and even pota-
toes—but lime is found only in the leaves of the
potato, very small traces occurring in the tubers,
which belong under Liebig's classification to the
potash plants. The clover sickness to which we
have so frequently referred is sometimes occa-
sioned by deficiency of lime in the soil; so also
is anbury, or finger-and-toe, in turnips—a disease
which rends and rots the parenchyma of the
root in consequence of its being obliged to send
shoots and tap roots in search of lime for its
skin. A crop of two tons of clover removes 1301 b.
of lime from the soil ; and the best application in
clover sickness has frequently been found to be
superphosphate of lime. Gypsum or sulphate of
lime is also found highly beneficial. Lime absorbs
moisture from the atmosphere with incredible
rapidity ; and a ton of quicklime when slaked
acquires three times its original bulk and weighs
25 cwt. The only advantage, however, gained by
slaking lime is its reduction to a fine powder,
which enables it to be more evenly spread. But
slaked lime very soon attracts carbonic acid from
the atmosphere, and becomes once more carbonate
of lime—the condition in which it usually exists,
and whence the most abundant supplies are ob-
tained by driving off the carbon in burning the
carbonate of lime or mountain limestone in kilns,
as 100 lb. of this when pure contains 44 lb. of
carbonic acid and 51 lb. of lime. Lime, there-
fore, by the process of burning, loses the whole
of its carbonic acid, and a ton weight is reduced
to 14 cwt.
The general opinion regarding the presence of
lime in the soil is that an arable toil ought not to
possess less than 1 per cent, of lime; and that 8
tons of burnt lime per acre would impart this
proportion to 6 inches of soil. A f ter &heavy liming
no farther addition will, however, be requisite
for six or eight years. A crop at the utmost
removes only from 1 to 2 bushels per acre of
lime, and the land at this rate gradually reverts
to the condition in which more lime is required
—faster—for the lime by its own specific gravity
uniformly deecenda below the active soil, and
there, upon digging a section, layer upon layer
of each successive liming the land may have un-
dergone will be found deposited. Lime not only
enables crops of superior quality and bulk to be
produced; it enhances the effect of undecom-
posed manure, by calling into action that which
may have been lying dormant. Manure, how-
ever, ought never to be laid upon the land im-
mediately after liming, because quicklime will
drive off all its ready-formed ammonia. Lima
destroys marsh and heath plants, such as moss,
heath, bent, and sour grasses, brings up sweet
herbage, with natural clover, and completely
renovates the herbage. All fodder is found more
nutritious when grown upon land sufficiently'
limed. The quantity of lime required varies in
proportion to the dryness of the soil, its stiffness,
and the amount of vegetable matter it contains.
Poor arable lands are awn worn out by repeated
liming and cropping. To exterminate mossossong
grass, &c., the lime must be applied in a live
state. Generally speaking, the more completely
and immediately quick lime is incorporated with
the soil, the more effectually the slaking is ac-
complished in connection with the soil the better.
In overspreading grass, however, where there
is no intention of destroying the herbage, it is
better first to slake the lime in the open air, I
reducing it to a powdery condition, and applying
it in the form of mild lime. In this state the
quantity of quick lime still contained in it,
should, however, be sufficient to effect the necee-
nary chemical changes in the soil; for on this its
ultimate efficacy depends. Quicklime should
never be applied to light or thin soils, sands, or
gravels.
Magneaian limestone has an effect similar to
1[ mountain limestone. It is a carbonate of mag-
nesia in combination with carbonate of lime, and
becomes caustic in burning • but must be used
iiibre sparingly than time destitute 4 magnesia,
since it re-absorbs carbonic acid more slowly,
and remains longer caustic. Its application is
,more properly made to arable than to grass land,
so wheat, barley, and all cereals require magnesia
flu' the perfect development both of their straw
and corn. Chemically supplying to the plant
both lime and carbonic acid, lime, as an alkaline
earth, neutralises the humic and other acids
naturally formed in soils, converts inert vegetable
'stetter into stimulating food for plants, and aids
the mineral decomposition of iron, manganese,
alumina, potash, soda, ammonia, and silica in
nails. To its perhaps over-stimulating effects, in
'fact, may be traced the origin of the adage,
"Lime enriches the fathers but impoverishes the
eons." Lime, however, does not necessarily
exhaust the soil unless applied with unsparing
'prodigality. The apparent exhaustion it pro-
duces is only perceptible in cases where the
sole application to the land has consisted in
laying on successive doses of lime, and where the
supplies of other manure have been too scanty.
At is where lime alone has been applied that
abundant crops are followed by exhaustion. The
,presence of mild lime in the soil assists in the
formation of nitrates; and the production of
nitre or saltpetre is dependent upon those pro-
.rties of lime whereby nitric acid is engendered
from vegetable matter. That invaluable salt,
nitrate of lime, is always to be found in old com-
piwit heaps. "Under ordinary circumstances,"
says Professor Way (Journal of the Royal
Agricultural Society) "and with the presence of
moisture, lime is capable of liberating one half
, the ammonia contained in a soil, in the case of
'ammonia locked up in the soil, lime may be the
,remedy at the command of the farmer, his
means of rendering immediately available stores
'of wealth which can otherwise only slowly be
'brought into use. In this view lime would well
'deserve the somewhat vague name that has been
given it—namely, that of a 'stimulant,' for its
application would in some sort be an application
of ammonia, whilst its excessive application by
P driving off ammonia would lead to all the disastrous
'effects which are so justly attributable to it. I
do not wish to push this assumption too far, but
If there be any truth in it, it points out the im-
portance of employing lime in small quantities
at short intervals, rather than in large doses,
once in may years."
Sulphate of lime or gypsum is the most abun-
dant of all the natural sulphates of earths or
metals. Very large quantities of the pure gyp-
sum quarried in Derbyshire, Mr. Parr tells us
(Letters to Farmers), in an unburnt state and
ground to powder are sent to London not only
for adulterating flour, angst; lozenges, &a, but
'for mixing with Peruvian guano, which it is sup-
posed by some to render genuine by taking a
,pound or two of value off the ton. This adultera-
tion is carried to an incredible extent. Chemically,
the composition of gypsum consists of 28 parts
'lime, 40 parts sulphuric acid, and 18 of water.
'Hence it is capable of supplying to plants, lime,
,sulphur, and sulphuric acid. In a burnt state
when it has lost all its water, it is the Well-known
plaster of Paris. Burnt gypsum dissolves less
'readily than unburnt, and much water is in both
instances required, since a gallon of water will
not take up into solution exceeding three drachms
of unburnt gypsum. A dressing of 3 cwt. per
acre will benefit clover on some kinds of land, as
it will other green crops requiring sulphur. As
sin addition to the dung-heap, gypsum in small
quantities is an important agent in fixing am-
, Monis. It is, however, better suited as a fixer
in the liquid manure tank, since it acts only in
the presence of an °Loess of moisture.
Agricultural salt, an article cheaply, ex- ,
tensively, and it would appear effectively used 1
as a top-dressing upon pastures, is by no means
a pure material, but presented to us in the less I
concentrated form, in which it is thus mixed up
with impurities, it is the better adapted for a
manure. Mr. Duckham uses it extensively on
his pastures in Herefordshire, but he has informed
me that though the results, as the appearance ,
and increase of the herbage, have been very I
marked, the use of it is attended with a serious
risk to breeding ewes, which cannot be too widely
known. This fact in his experience he has had
confirmed to him by that of the agent for a
nobleman in Wales, and of another practical
farmer in a different part of the country, so that
there can be no doubt that where salt has been
applied upon the pastures the cause of ewes
either dropping their lambs prematurely, or if
going to maturity bringing forth a diminutive
-4 weakly offspring has been in these three
• traced to the employment of salt as a
crass