354 A Letter tothe Farmers and 
all the laws relating to salt; and such a petition as this would 
be irresistible. The agriculturist and manufacturer would then 
be empowered to dig rock-salt with as much freedom as they can 
now dig sand, or raise coal; and the various national benefits 
which would result therefrom would be more numerous and im- 
portant than could easily be enumerated. 
Having addressed you at much greater length than I at first 
intended, all that remains for me now is, that I should give a 
few necessary cautions and directions to such of my readers as 
may determine to adopt the practice which has been recommended 
an the foregoing pages. : 
In the first place, I am desirous of remarking that no land can 
‘be said to be fruitful which is entirely exhausted of carbonaceous 
matter; therefore, if it were possible for an estate to be so worn 
‘out by successive crops that little or no carbon remained in the 
soil, it is not likely that salt alone would restore it to its origi- 
nal fertility. 1 consider also that the land which contains most 
carbon will derive most benefit from the application of salt. But 
the safest way for a farmer to proceed is to use his salt sparingly 
at first, and in all cases to leave a small portion of the same land 
without salt, so that the real effects produced by the salt may be, 
by comparison, in every instance, self-evident and palpable. 
A farmer who does not wish his land to lie fallow, ought, un- 
doubtedly, to use too little rather than too much salt ; because a 
very abundant dressing of this saline mineral substance might 
render the land, for one year at least, absolutely barren. We read 
in Scripture of the “ Valley of Salt,” where David smote the Sy- 
rians, which in all probability was an extent of low land that 
’ had been rendered barren by an influx of salt water. In one of 
the very early numbers of the Philosophical Transactions is an 
account of a valley of the same kind near Aleppo; and the late 
Dr. Browning relates that there is a vast desert on the frontiers 
of Russia, towards Crim Tartary, which, in consequence of a su- 
perabundance of salt, has become so absolutely sterile, that for 
the space of many miles neither tree nor herb grows upon it. 
This reminds me of a circumstance of primary importance to 
all those who obtain salt under the regulations of the late act of 
parliament. This act enjoins that the salt shall be delivered in 
lumps of twenty pounds each or upwards; consequently the whole 
of such salt must be broken before it can be used with any ad- 
vantage; for wherever salt is accumulated upon land, it must in- 
evitably destroy all vegetation that lies beneath it. Now it has 
occurred to ine that there is a possibility, from the carelessness of 
a labourer, of its being sometimes spread upon the land without 
being properly broken; and I am decidedly of opinion, that 
wherever a ump of rock-salt falls, whether upon arable or pas- 
ture 
