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The publication in 1832 of An Essay on Calcareous Manures initiated an eraof agricultural reform in the antebellum South. By 1850 Edmund Ruffinseconded by John Taylor of Carolina had effected a transformation of theeconomy of the upper South from poverty to agricultural prosperity. The essaysimportance is not only regional for in its four editions it presented Ruffinstheories to farmers who were facing the same problems of soil exhaustion inother parts of America. This small book with its uncompromisingly descriptivetitle is a landmark in the history of soil chemistry in the United States.Ruffin read widely in the literature mainly European of agriculturalchemistry and in the 1820s he experimented with ways to make planting pay onhis own tidewater Virginia lands. On the basis of his own research andfrustrating experience as a farmer he maintained that the capacity of soilfor enrichment by plant and animal manure is only relative to the originalfertility of the soil. In other words organic manures can only restore earthto what it was prior to cultivation. If land originally lacked the mineralingredients essential to fertility it would yield sparingly as long as theminerals were absent.Ruffin found that uncultivated land in his part of Virginia lacked calciumcarbonate and that most of this same poor soil contained vegetable acid thecause of its sterility. His solution was to plow in calcareous manure that isearth containing calcium carbonate thus neutralizing the acid. When Ruffinfirst had his slaves dig up marl from one of the beds of fossilized shells thatunderlie much of coastal Virginia and directed them to apply it to a testpatchof his land which was then planted with corn he increased his yield by 40 percent. This amazingly successful experiment led to others and became what acontemporary of Ruffin called the first systematic attempt wherein a plainpractical unpretending farmer...has unde «
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