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Professor Buckland oti Artesian W^ells.* 



Professor Buckland said, he would at once proceed to the 

 subject on which he had been requested to address the mem- 

 bers of the Artesian Well Committee of this place. In his 

 address, last Wednesday, to the Council of the Koyal Agricul- 

 tural Society, he had spoken of the capabilities of permanent 

 agricultural improvement in Hampshire, and other southern 

 counties of England, especially in the districts between the 

 sea coast, and a line drawn from Dorchester through Salis- 

 bury and Winchester to London, including Wareham Heath, 

 Poole Heath, the New Forest, and Bagshot Heath. If the 

 improvement of these wastes by the mineral manures that lie 

 beneath their surface, were taken up in a scientific manner, 

 and on a large scale, by great proprietors, or by a land-im- 

 provement company, small portable steam-engines, and port- 

 able tram roads, might be employed, to raise from shafts in 

 any part of this district, and transfer to profitable distances, 

 and spread upon the surface, the chalk, and clay, and marl, 

 that lie at various depths under the area of all these sandy 

 wastes. Thus, the silt of the Humber has, with very great 

 profit, been lately transferred by tram roads to be spread on 

 the surface of barren peat ; and in Norfolk, vast tracts of 

 sandy rabbit warrens have, during the last half century, been 

 converted to productive corn-fields, by adding to their surface 

 a top-dressing of marl, clay, chalk, or shelly sand and gravel, 

 locally called cra^. The cost of such top-dressings of mineral 

 manure need rarely exceed L.IO an acre, and the consequent 

 benefit is the conversion of dreary deserts into permanently 

 valuable arable land. On Lincoln Heath, where, not 100 

 years ago, a land-lighthouse was erected to guide the be- 

 nighted traveller across a barren sandy waste, the application 

 of scientific agriculture and capital had converted thousands 



* The above is an account of an interesting Address to the Mayor, 

 and Members of the Artesian Well Committee of Southampton, on the 

 27th of July 1844, by the Rev. Wm. Buckland, D.D., Professor of Geo- 

 logy, Oxford, &c. 



