MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS 
ON 
PLAISTER OF PARIS. 
THE prejudices for and against this manure are - 
‘ equally violent; and their is no way of correcting them, 
but by the results drawn from sober and continued 
experience. In Germany, where this fossil has been 
the longest known and used, opinions have been very 
opposite, and many of them very absurd and ridicu- 
lous. Not only sorcery and witchcraft have been charg- ' 
ed on those who used the plaister, but it has been said 
by some wonderfully wise people there, that it produced 
or attracted thunder and lightning. Some of the petty 
princes of that country have made edicts against the use 
of it, urged, perhaps, by the bigotry of its opponents, 
and the unfounded German adage: ‘‘that it makes rich > 
fathers and poor children.” The peasants have, how- 
ever, in opposition to these weak and tyrannical prohi- 
bitions, sown the plaister on their fields in the night. I 
have seen a treatise in German, on the subject of gyp- 
sum, as applied to agriculture, sautatate eats excel- 
‘Tent observations and useful lessons, mixed. with some 
