84 On the Alsurdity of burying Weeds, &c. 
again, or at least a sort of decaying matter, nearly allied to a 
kind of fat mould which we sometimes get from an earth that 
has not been broken up for a vast time, but that if suddenly put 
into tillage gives a very great return. When I opened the trough 
the second time, the wood was certainly more decayed than ten 
years of earth would have effected ; and ] found some black greasy 
powder rather too fine for earth, but much like it. If three 
dressings of tolerable hot lime will bring into agricultural order 
our commons loaded with furze and Erica, it would certainly 
answer in point of expense, especially as the upper layer might 
be carbonate at the third time of manuring, which would bring 
a fine bed of Cow Clover. 
It is quite painful to see to what extraordinary expenses far- 
mers will expose themselves to ruin their land. Whatever is the 
fashionable manure in the neighbourhood, whether it is lime, 
dung, marl, ashes, or clay, though perbaps the soils may be as 
various as our climate, still the same nutriment is applied. It is 
very common to see one manure placed on another which renders 
it perfectly nugatory, as lime on dung, lime on lime. In follow- 
ing the labours of a farmer, especially in Devonshire, you would 
think it was quite enough to dirty straw to make it manure. I 
have often seen straw thrown at a great expense in roads where 
no horses passed, the straw serving merely to tie the lumps of 
earth together, that when the frost came it might become im- 
possible to break or decompose them. /If,nutriment is necessary 
to plants (and few will deny so obvious a proposition), it must 
be that nourishment which can assimilate with their juices, the 
quality of the vegetable planted, and the manure must be ap- 
plied accordingly. Nutriment is given in three ways; first, spread 
or scattered; secondly, laid into drills as a sort of top dressing; 
the third is by the drill-machine with long dung, which does 
best for wheat, especially in clay soils. But each must not only 
he adapted to the plant which is going to be piaced in the 
ground, but the plant must be also suited to the soil, and the 
manure must be suited to both. It is a well known fact, that 
we are the only people who thus ruin their agriculture by being 
indifferent to this subject. 
There are but few agricultural plants usually made use of by 
a farmer; of these I selected ¢wenty to try in a variety of soils 
to endeavour to ascertain in which ground each would yield the 
greatest return, looking to profit. The turnip and carrot gave 
three parts in twenty more in sand than in any other soil. The 
cabbage two parts more in clay than in any other earth. The 
immense difference maintained by the Saintfoin in chalk or lime- 
stone, never proved less than an increase of four in twenty : Hops 
showed a predilection nearly as, great. ‘The Cow Clover was 
equally 
