* Questions addressed to Naturalists.” 437 
The first rain that falls, fills the pores: the seeds drink up the 
moisture. They germ, and put forth their tender piles to receive 
strength and vigour from the solar rays, and prepare themselves 
to sip the dews of the evening, or drink deep of the next suc- 
ceeding shower ; while the roots indent deeper, and draw nourish- 
ment from the surface dust of this calcareous mass. The Guinea 
grass in time acquires strength and body sufficient for the planter’s 
object. He then sets fire to the field and burns it down, reduces 
the whole dry foliage to ashes, which not only creates a quantity 
of vegetable earth, but at the same time produces a quantity of 
stimulating and fertilizing manure; while the fire calcines the 
exposed parts of the calcareous fragments, which pulverized by 
succeeding damps, and mixing with the ashes of the grass, adds 
to the accumulation of this uewly created field. This operation 
is continued, and the burning repeated by the planter, till he 
has acquired a sufficient depth of soil for more profitable cropping. 
Iirlike manner does the hardy Norwegian select patches to raise 
a little corn for his scanty pittance of bread. When nature has 
shed over the shelves and flats of his bleak inhospitable rocks, a 
quantity of the leaves or needles of the fir, sufficiently thick to 
retain moisture for the germination of seeds that fall in promis- 
cuous profusion, the young firs spring forth thick as the matted 
turf. When these have attained a few years growth, in the 
autumn, preceding the corn crop, they are burnt down. © The 
winter snows prepare the ashes for receiving the seed: on the first 
return of spring, the corn grows up, is cut down when ready, 
and the patch left for a succeeding crop of young firs, and again 
burnt, in regular rotation, 
To be satisfied that quartz is not absolutely unfruitful, we have 
only to take a view of the sands along the sea-beaten shore, 
raised originally from the depths of the ocean and dashed on the 
beach by the surging waves, blown by stormy winds till imbanked 
beyond the rise of the highest tides. These sands are scarcely 
dried in the sun and washed by the vernal rains, when a race of 
vegetables peculiar to themselves bud forth and flourish, from 
seeds that may also have come from the ocean, These plants, 
by producing seed, propagate their species, and die. Their re- 
mains produce the first germs of vegetable mould, which in 
process of time accumulate, and may then be enriched by plants 
of a more luxuriant kind, and the soil become too effeminate for 
the coarse-grained aboriginal, whose existence may not now be 
raced, but whose seed lies safely imbedded and gone to rest. 
Disdaining the soil of the effeminate and voluptuous, they claim 
their primitive sand as 4 dormitory, ready to assume new life the 
moment they are left to the enjoyment of their native beans 
n 
