barely recognizable as shells. Europeans knew marl well through long ex-
perimental use. No one, including Edmund Ruffin, understood just yet that
calcium (whether lime or marl) fixed nitrogen in manured soils and that,
thus fixed, nitrogen would feed plants instead of evaporating into the atmo-
sphere. How much marl per acre should be applied on soils in various con-
ditions? This became Ruffin’s ongoing experiment in applied science. In
, when he was all of twenty-seven years old, Ruffin’s account of his dis-
covery and first applications appeared in theAmerican Farmerof Baltimore,
then the nation’s most prestigious agricultural newspaper. Ruffin hesitated
another eleven years before publishing his magnum opus,Essay on Calcare-
ous Manures, which he would edit, update, and republish in new editions
(five in all) over the next two decades.^7 Dung and green manure were hardly
disrespected—the colonels Carter and Taylor had their worthy points—
but now calcareous manures earned the imprimatur of modern science,
and hope now dawned that tidewater plantations, and eastern civilization,
might be saved after all.
At thirty-seven (in ), Ruffin started hisFarmers’ Registerinashedon
his second farm, inevitably named Shellbanks. Shortly the master farmer
quit his profession and took his paper to nearby Petersburg, where he per-
sisted through as editor, writer, and exhorter to brother southern
planters. TheRegisterattracted about , subscribers by , then some-
what fewer, and finally less than a thousand by the journal’s final year. This
readership consisted principally of influential and engaged male members
of the elites, particularly in Maryland, Virginia, and both Carolinas, plus a
few from trans-Appalachia and the Gulf states. TheRegisteroffered them a
few ‘‘exchange’’ reprints from other papers, but much fewer than custom-
ary then. Ruffin himself contributed many general and specialized articles
and was probably author of nearly all the small and substantial unsigned
pieces. All the while he persisted as avid reader of European chemistry
and agronomy, learning French to extend his grasp and becoming an im-
portant American vector for practical Continental learning. When, for in-
stance, an English translation of the German baron and professor Justus
von Liebig’sOrganic Chemistry in Its Application to Agriculture and Physi-
ologyappeared in , Ruffin bought and devoured the book, then pro-
claimed Liebig’s genius inFarmers’ Register. Liebig had already (during a
visit to England) shocked British scientists by attacking the ‘‘humus theory’’
of soil improvement and plant growth. An inventor of modern inorganic
chemistry, Liebig offered instead what the British called a ‘‘mineral theory.’’
Liebig argued that organic fertilizers such as dung were largely superflu-