III.] PREPARATION. 



the convenient means. There are, to be sure, 

 such miserable sands, such bare-boned gravels, 

 and such spewy white stuff as you find in the 

 sweet valleys of Bagshot Heath. Here nothing 

 will grow, and God never intended that any thing 

 should grow, except heath and furze, to furnish 

 fuel to poor people, and wire grass to furnish 

 food for their asses. These spots, which a wise 

 and merciful Providence would seem to have made 

 so worthless, for the express purpose of preventing 

 the rich from being tempted to take them from the 

 poor, but which, in spite of the manifestly implied 

 injunction, have been taken from them in almost 

 every part of the kingdom^ never were intended 

 by nature to bear corn or grain of any sort ; and 

 they never do bear it, unless the means of pro- 

 duction be actually brought from other parts and 

 put upon them. But, 1 repeat, that any land, 

 which will bear a crop of grain of any sort, even 

 an inferior crop of grain, may be made to carry 

 a tolerably gcfod crop of Indian Corn. 



45. One principal thing, is, in every case, to 

 have the ground deeply ploughed late in the win- 

 ter, or in March, and ploughed again and well 

 broken in April ; and, not to plough in, the first 

 time, any immense stock of grass or of weeds, 

 to generate or harbour grubs or slugs. It is not 

 only in grass-land that the brown grub is gene- 

 rated and cherished. A good stock of weeds 



