An Essay on Calcareous Manures

Edmund Ruffin

Published by Harvard University Press 1961

An Essay on Calcareous Manures

Edmund Ruffin

Edited by: J. Carlyle Sitterson

Volume 10 in the series The John Harvard Library

https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674864627

Overview
Contents

About this book

The publication in 1832 of An Essay on Calcareous Manures initiated an era of agricultural reform in the ante-bellum South. By 1850 Edmund Ruffin, seconded by John Taylor of Carolina, had effected a transformation of the economy of the upper South from poverty to agricultural prosperity. The essay's importance is not only regional, for in its four editions it presented Ruffin's theories to farmers who were facing the same problems of soil exhaustion in other parts of America. This small book, with its uncompromisingly descriptive title, is a landmark in the history of soil chemistry in the United States.

Ruffin read widely in the literature, mainly European, of agricultural chemistry, and in the 1820's he experimented with ways to make planting pay on his own tidewater Virginia lands. On the basis of his own research and frustrating experience as a farmer, he maintained that the capacity, of soil for enrichment by plant and animal manure is only relative to the original fertility of the soil. In other words, organic manures can only restore earth to what it was prior to cultivation. If land originally lacked the mineral ingredients essential to fertility, it would yield sparingly as long as the minerals were absent.

Ruffin found that uncultivated land in his part of Virginia lacked calcium carbonate, and that most of this same poor soil contained vegetable acid, the cause of its sterility. His solution was to plow in calcareous manure that is, earth containing calcium carbonate thus neutralizing the acid. When Ruffin first had his slaves dig up marl from one of the beds of fossilized shells that underlie much of coastal Virginia, and directed them to apply it to a test patch of his land, which was then planted with corn, he increased his yield by 40 per cent. This amazingly successful experiment led to others, and became what a contemporary of Ruffin called "the first systematic attempt wherein a plain, practical, unpretending farmer...has undertaken to examine into the real composition of the soils which he possesses and has to cultivate."

Author information

Ruffin Edmund :

Edmund Ruffin, born in 1794, was a planter in Prince George County, Virginia, from 1813 until 1843, when he moved to Hanover County, where he remained until 1861. Not content to be simply an agricultural reformer, he began in 1833 to edit and publish the influential Farmer's Register. His insertion of his increasingly fiery political views into the pages of the Register gradually lost him his readership and was responsible for the demise of the periodical in 1842. Although Ruffin became an active Southern nationalist and secessionist long before most of his fellows, his metamorphosis was basically that of other Southern radicals. By 1855 his main energies were devoted to converting the timid to his extremist cause. When the order came to shell Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, the stern old Virginian with long white hair was chosen to fire the first shot—the climax of his political career. By 1865, the War was over, Ruffin's world had disintegrated, and, leaving an entry in his diary declaring his "unmitigated hatred to Yankee rule," he shot himself.Sitterson J. Carlyle :

J. Carlyle Sitterson is the author of Secession Movement in North Carolina (1939), Sugar Country (1957), and articles on Southern plantations, and editor of Studies in Southern History (1951). He was Professor of History and Dean of the College of Arts' and Sciences, University of North Carolina.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Edmund Ruffin, Agricultural Reformer and Southern Radical J. Carlyle Sitterson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE OF EDMUND RUFFIN Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xxxiv
PREFACE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
CHAPTER I. GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF EARTHS AND SOILS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	7
CHAPTER II. ON THE SOILS AND STATE OF AGRICULTURE OF THE TIDEWATER DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	14
CHAPTER III. THE DIFFERENT CAPACITIES OF SOILS FOR IMPROVEMENT Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
CHAPTER IV. EFFECTS OF THE PRESENCE OF CALCAREOUS EARTH IN SOILS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	31
CHAPTER V. RESULTS OF THE CHEMICAL EXAMINATIONS OF VARIOUS SOILS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	38
CHAPTER VI. CHEMICAL EXAMINATION OF RICH SOILS CONTAINING NO CALCAREOUS EARTH Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	46
CHAPTER VII. PROOFS OF THE EXISTENCE OF ACID AND NEUTRAL SOILS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	51
CHAPTER VIII. THE MODE OF OPERATION OF CALCAREOUS EARTH IN SOILS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
CHAPTER IX. THE PRACTICAL EFFECTS OF CALCAREOUS MANURES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	78
CHAPTER Χ. THE EFFECTS OF CALCAREOUS MANURES, ON ACID SOILS REDUCED BY CULTIVATION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	98
CHAPTER XI. EFFECTS OF CALCAREOUS MANURES ON EXHAUSTED ACID SOILS, UNDER THEIR SECOND GROWTH OF TREES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	108
CHAPTER XII. EFFECTS OF CALCAREOUS MANURES, ON NEUTRAL SOILS, ALONE, OR WITH GYPSUM Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	111
CHAPTER XIII. THE DAMAGE CAUSED BY CALCAREOUS MANURE, AND ITS REMEDIES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	120
CHAPTER XIV. RECAPITULATION OF THE EFFECTS OF CALCAREOUS MANURES, AND DIRECTIONS FOR THEIR MOST PROFITABLE APPLICATION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	125
CHAPTER XV. THE PERMANENCY OF CALCAREOUS MANURES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
CHAPTER XVI. THE EXPENSE AND PROFIT OF MARLING Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	140
CHAPTER XVII. DIRECTIONS FOR DIGGING AND CARTING MARL Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	149
APPENDIX
A. DIFFERENT SIGNIFICATIONS OF CALCAREOUS EARTH Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	158
Β. THE NAMES USUALLY GIVEN TO SOILS OFTEN INCORRECT Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	160
C. SOME EFFECTS OF SLAVERY ON AGRICULTURAL PROFITS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	162
D. OPINIONS THAT SOILS ARE GENERALLY CALCAREOUS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	164
E. CALCAREOUS EARTH A PRESERVER OF PUTRESCENT ANIMAL MATTER Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	168
F. MARLING IN ENGLAND – LIMING Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	169
G. THE CAUSE OF THE INEFFICACY OF GYPSUM AS A MANURE ON ACID SOILS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	184
H. ESTIMATES OF THE COST OF LABOUR APPLIED TO MARLING Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	187
Backmatter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	201

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Copyright year: 1961
Edition: Reprint 2014
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Front matter: 35
- Main content: 199
Illustrations
- Other: none
Keywords: Marl.; Fertilizers.; SCIENCE / General; SCIENCE / History

eBook

Published: October 1, 2013
ISBN: 9780674864627

Hardcover

Published: February 5, 1961
ISBN: 9780674864610