334 Progress of Foreign Science. 



soil in which no vegetation is going on. It also disappears 

 sooner, being dissolved by the living powers of the vegetables, 

 and carried into their circulation. 



We were not a little amused with the contrast in sense and 

 science, between the work of the Italian Professor, and an Of- 

 ficial Report, signed by Count Dubois, Yvart, and Hericart 

 de Thury, Members of the Commission of Manures of Paris, 

 made to the Royal and Central Society of Agriculture, on a 

 new Manure proposed under the name of the Alkalino-Vege- 

 table Poudrettes. These gallant gentlemen extol one of their 

 countrywomen, Madame Vibert Dubout, patentee of the Pou- 

 drettes, for her discovery and indefatigable practice of the fol- 

 lowing operations : — " After allowing the consistent ordure to 

 subside, she draws off the urinous liquid into a basin, and 

 leaves it in repose for fifteen or twenty days, to allow time for 

 the alkaline and saline elaborations to be naturally formed. 

 She then slakes or diffuses quicklime in the urines, in the pro- 

 portion of a fifth part of the whole. At this moment the lady 

 feels herself exposed to an infectious and insupportable odour, 

 from the escape of various gases. At the end of eight days 

 the slaked lime forms a fair or yellowish paste, soft and soapy 

 to the touch, which diffuses the odour of violets. This paste 

 is removed, spread on a spacious and well-aired area, covered 

 with a layer thrice its thickness of the consistent ordure, which 

 had been meanwhile dried and drained in the upper basins. 

 On these two primary beds others are formed in alternate suc- 

 cession, taking care to leave from space to space layers of the 

 thick matter in mutual contact, in order to facilitate their fer- 

 mentation. In a shorter or longer time, according to the state 

 of the weather, there arises in the mass a fermentation, more 

 or less active, which rises, becomes puffy, and speedily con- 

 founds the different strata of the alternate matters. When the 

 fermentation has ceased the great masses must be cut down, 

 intimately mixed together, piled up anew, and left to become 

 thoroughly dry. Finally, at the end of a certain time, a mix- 

 ture absolutely inodorous is obtained, which is to be reduced 

 into powder, by the ordinary processes, and which forms the 

 new patent Poudrette of Madame Vibert Dubout." We shall 

 not stop to enumerate the marvellous virtues ascribed to this 

 spoiled manure, by the learned commissioners. That a lady 

 should contrive, execute, and describe so abominable a process, 

 is to us in England not a little surprising ; but that an opera- 

 tion so unscientific, destructive, and absurd, should be re- 

 cently held forth to admiration, in the Annales de V Agriculture 

 Francaise, is curious in the extreme, and must give the world an 

 odd opinion of French husbandry. 



III. Pjivsics. In our next Number we shall endeavour to 



