“Do you think lime would do any good,” asked the Deacon, “on our limestone land?”--I certainly do. So far as I have seen, it does just as much good here in Western New York, as it did on my father’s farm. I should use it very freely if we could get it cheap enough--but we are charged from 25 to 30 cts. a bushel for it, and I do not think at these rates it will pay to use it. Even gold may be bought too dear. “You should burn your own lime,” said the Deacon, “you have plenty of limestone on the farm, and could use up your down wood.”--I believe it would pay me to do so, but one man cannot do everything. I think if farmers would use more lime for manure we should get it cheaper. The demand would increase with competition, and we should soon get it at its real value. At 10 to 15 cents a bushel, I feel sure that we could use lime as a manure with very great benefit. “I was much interested some years ago,” said the Doctor, “in the results of Prof. Way’s investigations in regard to the absorptive powers of soils.” His experiments, since repeated and confirmed by other chemists, formed a new epoch in agricultural chemistry. They afforded some new suggestions in regard to how lime may benefit land. Prof. Way found that ordinary soils possessed the power of separating, from solution in water, the different earthy and alkaline substances presented to them in manure; thus, when solutions of salts of ammonia, of potash, magnesia, etc., were made to filter slowly through a bed of dry soil, five or six inches deep, arranged in a flower-pot, or other suitable vessel, it was observed that the liquid which ran through, no longer contained any of the ammonia or other salt employed. The soil had, in some form or other, retained the alkaline substance, while the water in which it was previously dissolved passed through. Further, this power of the soil was found not to extend to the whole salt of ammonia or potash, but only to the alkali itself. If, for instance, sulphate of ammonia were the compound used in the experiments, the ammonia would be removed from solution, but the filtered liquid would contain sulphuric acid in abundance--not in the free or uncombined form, but united to lime; instead of sulphate of ammonia we should find sulphate of lime in the solution; and this result was obtained, whatever the acid of the salt experimented upon might be. It was found, moreover, that the process of filtration was by no means necessary; by the mere mixing of an alkaline solution with a proper quantity of soil, as by shaking them together in a bottle, and allowing the soil to subside, the same result was obtained. The action, therefore, was in no way referable to any physical law brought into operation by the process of filtration. It was also found that the combination between the soil and the alkaline substance was rapid, if not instantaneous, partaking of the nature of the ordinary union between an acid and an alkali.