Agricultural History Review, Volume 41 Part 2 (1993), pp. 97–110

Marling has usually been viewed by British historians either as a practice of no clearly identifiable purpose, or as an exercise designed to add body to light softs. It has also been presented as a crude, ancient affair, largely irrelevant to modern fanning. The suggestion here is that it perfonned important chemical functions, and that these - most notably the reduction of soft acidity and the attendant liberation of plant nutrients - gave it an important role in improved farming through to the nineteenth century, terminal obsolescence only setting in as supplies of cheaply transportable lime became increasingly available. 

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