ANALYSIS OF SOILS. 229 



said, endless variety of articles which entered into the prescrip 

 tions of my medical advisers in the customary form of grains, 

 scruples, drams, and mixtures. So much of this article was for 

 this specific purpose, and so much of that for another. This 

 was to qualify that ; that was to qualify this. This was to 

 prevent such an article doing too much, and that was to prevent 

 its doing too little. One was to operate upon the bile, another 

 upon the blood ; one upon the respiration, and another upon the 

 digestion. And all this was to be going on, and to be accom 

 plished, at the same time. I confess I was often in the situation, 

 in respect to my physician, of the wondering pupils of Gold 

 smith s village schoolmaster, and marvelled &quot; that one small 

 head could carry all he knew.&quot; I had, at least, the consolation 

 in the case of feeling that, as the surgeons often pleasantly term 

 it, when amputating a limb, or operating for the extraction of the 

 stone, I was furnishing at least a beautiful experiment in the 

 way of medical science ; and it must be said to the credit of my 

 physician, whose kindness amidst all this I never can forget, 

 that, although his philosophy and his scientific ardor carried him 

 to the most extreme tests, and he might be said to have sus 

 pended me over a precipice by a twine string, confident that, if 

 I dropped, it would at least prove that common twine was not 

 strong enough in such cases, a most important fact to be 

 ascertained, I was not quite used up, but was, after a while, 

 enabled to show myself erect again, a perfect monument of the 

 triumph of his skill. 



Let us now open at random upon some of the analyses given 

 us in the work of the most distinguished chemist of the day, and 

 inquire who has skill to prescribe for cases so complicated in 

 their nature, or in any event what prescription would suit the 

 case, but one as multiform and mixed as those of my own 

 physician. 



SOILS OF HEATHS. 



&quot; 1. Soil of a heath converted into arable land in the vicinity 



of Brunswick. It is naturally sterile, but produces good crops 



when manured with lime, marl, cow-dung, or the ashes of the 



heaths which grow upon it.&quot; [It would be difficult, I think, to 



20 



