170 



irWthifnol allBecMMry will ever be found useful. — Sect. 2. 

 " On the choice of situations." — He very justly prefers a low 

 situation, that is not feny, to one that is high, if not well 

 wooded and a good soil; for in the first " though the owner 

 may want prospect, he can want nothing else, that the nature 

 of his happy situation can furnish him with," (p. 13.) — but the 

 circumstances which are essential, and must determine every 

 scite are the concurrence of wood, water, and proper soil. — 

 Chap. 3. Sect. 3. Is " Of the proper choice of soils, &c. for a 

 country seat." — It is a chapter which contains as much as is 

 Beccssary to say upon a subject of so much importance, and 

 yet to which so few general rules will apply. — The sum of the 

 whole is that the best soil for general purposes is either 

 a sandy loom, or a black pasture mould, one or two feet deep, 

 on a substratum of gravel, chalk, or shelly rock.— He describes 

 symptoms, the growth of various weeds, &c. by which the rich- 

 ness of soils may be estimated, but before any situation is re- 

 jected, otherwise desirable, on account of the superficial soil, 

 he recommends a hole to be dug to ascertain the substrata, for 

 a poor sand may have a boggy marie within its bosom which 

 mixed with it would render it fertile, and he observes, " I dare 

 affirm that there is no superficies of earth, how poor soever it 

 may be, but has in its own bowels something or other for its 

 own improvement." A maxim, which however indisputable 

 in a literal sense, yet too general to be true in a practical view, 

 for the remedy in many lies too deep to be available, but still 

 it is so far founded upon fact, as to deserve the attention of 

 every cultivator. He enters very minutely into particulars, 

 wilhout however being tedious, and the whole chapter may be 

 advantageously perused for instruction. 



Chap. 4. Sect. 4. Is devoted to an amplification of his ideas 

 on " Rural and extensive Gardening," as briefly alluded to in 

 the previous ones, or his mode of combining profit with plea- 

 iur«. He then proceeds to give directions for staking out the 



