1857.] The Raw Material. 117 



commence, but when you do enter it, stop not at the threshold, loi- 

 ter not at your hill-sides, leave nothing to chance, guess not at all, 

 and trust nothing to the eye, but go all through, over and around 

 it, and never leave the field, if possible, until the whole is leveled, 

 and you know the work is accurately done. Do but this, and you 

 may then go home and pillow your head in a happy and glorious 

 certainty that your soil is secure, though the ' winds blow and the 

 rains descend.' 



The number of ' guide rows ' I always make dependent upon the 

 character of the lands, increasing them when the slope is abrupt and 

 rugged, and diminishing them where it is more gentle and even. 

 Once weW c?o?ie, it is a work for a life-time; and wherever it even 

 approximates accuracy, the land is, to that extent, secure, and it is 

 an easy matter, after the first rain, to detect any departure from it, 

 and to remedy any defect — and defects there must be, at first, unless 

 every row was seen with the level. 



Different Saltness op Different Seas. — Surprise has been ex- 

 pressed that vessels going direct to Sebastopol take a smaller cargo 

 than if they were only going to Constantinople, or that they dimin- 

 ish their cargo in the latter port before entering the Black Sea. 

 The reason is this: — the density of the water of diiferent seas is 

 more or less considerable, and the vessels sailing in them sink in the 

 water more or less, according to their density. The density arises 

 from the quantity of salt contained in the water ; and, consequently, 

 the Salter the sea is, the less a vessel sinks in it. As, too, the more 

 sail a vessel carries the deeper she sinks in the water, it follows that 

 the more salt the water the greater the quantity of sail that can be 

 carried. Now, the Black Sea being sixteen times less salt than the 

 Mediterranean, a vessel which leaves Toulon or Marseilles for Sebas- 

 topol must take a smaller cargo than one that only goes to Constan- 

 tinople, and a still smaller one if it is to enter the Sea of Azoff, which 

 is eighteen times less salt than the Mediterranean. It is known that 

 the Mediterranean is twice as salt as the Atlantic, once more than 

 the Adriatic, five times more than the Caspian Sea, twelve times more 

 than the Ionian Sea, and seventeen times more than the Sea of Mar- 

 mora! The Dead Sea contains more salt than any other sea; it is 

 asserted that two tons of its water yield five hundred and eighty-nine 

 pounds of salt and magnesia. 



