SOILS. 77 



its texture and improve its quality." Of these, having tried 

 them fairly, I have found that which is happily the closest 

 to our hand (like a thousand other privileges and blessings, 

 had we but eyes to see them) to be the most advantageous 

 — I mean burnt clay. Some of our modern writers and 

 lecturers speak of it as of a recent discovery ; but the 

 Romans knew it, and used incinerated soils two thousand 

 years before Sir Humphry Davy wrote, — "The process of 

 burning renders the soil less compact, less tenacious and 

 retentive of moisture ; and, properly applied, may convert a 

 matter that was stiff, damp, and in consequence cold, into 

 one powdery, dry, and warm, and much more proper as a 

 bed for vegetable life." Let those Rosarians, therefore, who 

 have heavy tenacious soils, having first tapped their drop- 

 sical patients by drain and trench, promote their con- 

 valescence by a combination of ancient and modern, 

 external and internal, pharmacy ; let them unite the old 

 custom of cautery, as they burn their clay, with the new 

 precepts of homoeopathy, similia similibiis citi'antm\ And 

 with this object let them save everything, as we were wont 

 to do in our school-days when the Festival of Fawkes drew 

 nigh, for a bonfire. Keep the prunings of your Rosary, 

 that new Roses, like the Phoenix, may spring from the 



