as a Manure for Heavy Clay Soils. 325 



land. This practice, wliicli was recommended by General Beat- 

 son^ and of which Mr. Pym has given so satisfactory an account, 

 still continues in many districts on a limited scale. I have 

 obtained the following account of it from a correspondent in 

 another county : — 



" Having been requested to communicate with you on the subject 

 of clay-burning, I am happy to do it as far as my knowledge of it 

 extends. My attention was first called to it, above twenty years ago, 

 at a Bedfordshire Agricultm-al Meeting, where the subject was dis- 

 cussed ; and I heard it declared by some farmers then present that they 

 could not cultivate to any profit their strongest and worst lands but by 

 the help of clay-burning. And a friend of mine, afterwards on the 

 Buckinghamshire side of that county, confirmed the same statement. 

 Consequently, being obliged to take into my own hands an impoverished 

 strong-land farm here in Leicestershire, I resorted to the same expe- 

 dient ; and, encouraged by me, some of my neighbours did the same, 

 and we all found the benefit of it. 



" By c/a?/-burning we do not of course mean 'paring and burning^ in 

 which there can be little or no clay, and of which the ashes are expected 

 to operate as a manure by reason of the decomposed vegetable alkali in 

 them ; but we mean, taking the inert mass dug at any depth below the 

 first 7 inches from the surface, such as the contents of newly-made 

 pits, the bottoms of ditches made deeper than before, and the outcast of 

 soughs. In this there can be very little of a feeding or fertilizing qua- 

 lity, though I cannot but think that a red or blue clay is of more value 

 than a dirty white. And I have no doubt that stiff chalks or clayey 

 stonebrash, after the action of fire, would be much of the same qualitv. 

 The most waxy clay-lands, well dressed over with well-burnt clay, not 

 only become lighter and milder, as by the action of lime, for the time, 

 but so they continue for several years. A neighbouring farmer tells me 

 that a field he dressed in this way 7 years ago has ploughed easier by a 

 horse-draught, and has been like different land ever since, whereas 

 lime, especially if very caustic, when once saturated with rain, makes 

 the land closer and colder than ever. Strong land, on which barley 

 is never a full, and always a hazardous crop, fallowed and dressed 

 over with burnt clay, and seeded down with barley in the spring, 

 never fails to give a very good crop, and to be well covered with the 

 clover for the next year. In clay-burning, however, there is great 

 skill and judgment and management required. Indeed I know of no 

 part of husbandry that does require so much good sense joined with 

 experience in the burning. And upon this all depends. If it be well 

 done, it is a great benefit to the farmer ; if ill, it is quite the reverse. 

 A nobleman in this neighbourhood made a large pond in the solid clay, 

 and burnt all the outcast : there must have been between 2000 and 3000 

 loads ; and he top-dressed the worst part of his parks with the ashes, 

 falsely so called. And in three years afterwards they were above half 

 carried off again, in the substance, though not in the shape, of brick-ends, 

 to make foundation for roads. 



" The heat should always be slow and steady, never, if possible, burning 



