ing fact in our American
agriculture that, fertile as our country is as a whole, very great areas
were so deficient in lime before they came under man's control that the
chestnut, pine, and the oaks of mean growth were fully at home. The
gradation from low lime content to high, and its relation to soil type,
give us all sorts of mixtures of lime-loving and acid-resistant
varieties of trees in original forests, but our agriculture is hampered
by the high percentage of land for which nature made no great provision
of lime, and on this land farming lags.

_Effect of Irrational Farming._ Interest in liming might well have been
due to the amendment of all this soil, but the rational use of lime that
has been the subject of much study in the last quarter of a century
concerns chiefly great areas that probably could have been kept in
alkaline condition and friendly to the clovers for a long time despite a
short natural supply as compared with the content of our limestone
lands. The success of individual farmers in areas now admittedly acid as
a whole is convincing on this point. Nature tries constantly to cure
the ills of her soil through the addition of vegetable matter. An excess
of water or a deficiency is atoned for in a degree by the leaves and
rotted wood of her forests. Aeration is kept possible. The lime in the
product of the soil goes back to it. A system of farming that involves
the application of manure, thorough tillage, drainage where needed, and
the free use of sods in some way, has kept portions of these
non-calcareous soils out of the distinctly acid class. Clover grows
satisfactorily, grass sods are heavy, and there is no acute lime
problem. Such farms are relatively few in the great stretches of land
now classed as acid soil, and probably the most of the lime that is
being applied goes only on ground that once was sufficiently alkaline to
grow the clovers. The loss of organic matter through failure to use the
best methods of farming is responsible for no small part of the
widespread need of lime today. This subtracts nothing from the urgency
of its use to restore a condition favoring clover and grass sods, but it
does teach a lesson of the highest value. The day of destructive soil
acidity can be retarded by good farming, but in the long run the
inevitable losses of lime from most soils must be met by applications.

_Limestone Soils._ The old-time practice of making heavy applications of
fresh burned lime to