The Lambertville record. [volume] (Lambertville, N.J.) 1872-1968, 1881-09-14
ing analysis of Woodstown maria fai
specimen of other alayses--will show:

The value of potash, which acts like wood
ashes, aud of the phosphates is well known to
many farmers. These are the chief fertilizing
elements in mari.
Mari was first found in New Jersey in 1903.
An Irishman in Monmouth County digging a
ditch threw some of the greensand out on a
meadow, where its fertilizing qualities were
noticed. BY the early part of this century it
had come into pretty common use, until now
ture throughout central New Jersey. In the
whole State several millions of bushels are
spread each year, and its use constantly in
creases. The farmers usually spread it in the
autumn, putting sometimes several hundred
bushels on an acre. Now and then they find
deposit on their own farms which can be
dug with spades, but more often they have
recourse to the Systematically worked beds,
where they pay forty cents for each load of
twenty Bushels. In Woodstown during au-
tumnal days the mari wagons move through
the streets almost in procession, and the roads
for a quarter of a mile from the pits take
their hue from the green sand which has
sifted through the boards.
The mari is good for all crops; 1t renews
them on exhausted land, 1t increases them on
land already productive. For potato plants
it is specific, killing worms, charging the
root, and making the potato smooth-skinned
and fair There is mari, however, very
common, and known locally as poison mari, =
the effect Of which is quite opposite. 1t con-
tains an excess of copperas, which is deadly to
the fields, killing every living plant for sew
eral years. Not uncommonly stratum of
good mari runs into one that is noxious, and
serious injury to farm follows. The poison
GUS mari, however, can be cured by mixing IL
with lime and in that case 1t becomes SUI
perior for raising crops to the mari which
does not have to be chemically treated. The
poisonous mari is detected BY the length of
time that is needed to dry it after 1t is wet by
rain. But the farmers have what they regard
as more radical test. If white clover grows
on the mari a few days after it is thrown from
the pit the compost is good otherwise 1t is
poisonous. The best mari has thus singular
affinity for the germs of white clover floating
in the air, and in few weeks the biggest
heaps may become bfahketed with the little
flowers.
The more general results of the continuous
use of marls on the soils of Salem and ada
cent counties are very striking. Lands that
used to be worth five dollars an acre have
been enriched within a few years to q value
of one or two hundred dollars an acre. The
surface stratum Of this county consists OF q
| light, sandy soff easily exhausted unless some
artificial fertilizer is used ; consequently 1t is
not too much to say that the county has been
absolutely reclaimed as to farming by the
green sand which underlies it. The Salem
farmers brag that no lands in the Union can
compare with theirs in average selling value,
and SO long as ordinary farms here bring a
hundred dollars an acre the boast seems justi-
| fed. What is true of Salem County holds
for most other parts of New Jersey through
which the mari belt runs, and one effect has
been to increase during the last half century
the average value of the farm lands Of the
whole State in most extraordinary manner.
Probably 1000 square miles in the wild
southern counties of the State are absolutely
unimproved, yet the new census is likely to
show that New Jersey can sell her farms for
more money per acre than any one Of her
sister States. The story of her agricultural
redemption is registered in mari, and, though
written in sand, the record only grows palmer
| with timed. D., in EveDtng Post.