LANCASTEH BANDfci. 



CnAPTER IL 



FORMATION OF NATURAL SOILS. 



CO. Whoever travels in these days of railways and makes use of his eyes, 

 must of necessity be struck, as he careers along between precipitous railway- 

 banks, with the variety of soils and subsoils which present themselves palpably 

 visible to the naked eye. White, red, and blue, pass in rapid succession ; soils, 

 sandy and dry, pulverizing readily under tillage, or stiff, wet, and unmanage- 

 able, may all be passed in a day's journey. In the absence of more exciting 

 food for thought, the passing traveller, breaking through that indifference which 

 takes all things for granted, may well ask himself whence the great diversity 

 of soils, and what their constituents ? 



■21. The chemist will answer readily enough that they are compoimded of a 

 great many chemical substances, and repeat the names of some fourteen, which 

 are present in vai-ying propoi-tions in all fertile soils. The practical cultivator, 

 ■with equal readiness, reduces them to some five or six well-ascertained varie- 

 ties of soil, characterized according to the prejoonderating proportions of silica, 

 lime, clay, vegetable mould, marl, or loam, which they contain ; according 

 to his rough estimate. 



I. Sandy soils contain 80 per cent., or 



thereabouts, of silica ; that is, of the 

 crumbling debris of granit* or sand- 

 stone rock. 



II. Calcaeeous soils contain 20 per cent, 

 and upwards of lime in their composi- 

 tion. 



III. Clay soils contain 50 per cent, of stiff 

 unctuous clay. 



IV. Vegetablb mould, the richest of all 



garden soils, contains from 5 to 12 per 

 cent, of humus; that is, decomposed 

 vegetable and animal matter. 



V. Marly soil, is the debris of limestone 

 rock, decomposed and reduced to a 

 paste. 



VI. Loamy soil, in which the proportion 

 of clay varies from 20 to 25 per cent. ; 

 sand, "and various kinds of alluvium, 

 making up the remainder. 



