SOILS OF GREAT BRITAIN. 401 



, These compounds are advertised for sale at 10 sterling, 

 or $50, per ton, and a ton, it is said, will be sufficient for 

 manuring four acres. Some agricultural friends, who have ap 

 plied them, have promised me the results of their experiments. 

 My readers shall have them when they are received. Such a 

 discovery would certainly constitute a great advance in agricul 

 tural improvement. I shall not venture to predict, but patiently 

 wait the issue, not deeming it necessary to caution those, whose 

 funds are limited, against large investments. It seems, from 

 some examples already given, that, with time, the soil itself, by 

 its own inherent energies, for which we cannot be sufficiently 

 grateful, will recover its exhausted fertility. In the mean time, 

 its use is never to be abandoned ; for the improved agriculture of 

 modem times has certainly made one great advance in utterly 

 condemning a naked fallow, and the soil may be occupied with 

 &amp;lt;jqual advantage, both to itself and its cultivators, by a succession 

 of tenants. 



LXVII. SOILS OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



The soils of Great Britain, in two or three respects, differ essen 

 tially from the soils of the United States. In Great Britain, or 

 rather in England, for I believe the formation does not extend 

 into Scotland or Ireland, there is a vast amount of chalk, com 

 ing, in some cases, directly to the surface, and turned up by the 

 plough ; in other cases, formed a few inches below a surface of 

 mould or loam, interspersed, in some cases, with an infinite 

 number of small or broken flint-stones. We have much cal 

 careous soil in the United States, much of the primitive and 

 secondary limestone formation, but I know of no deposits of 

 chalk. I have not seen in Great Britain sfriy soils of pure sand, 

 such as we find on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, on the eastern 

 shores of New Jersey, and in the South Atlantic States. Nor do 

 I know in the United States of any such mountain peat, or bog, 

 as is to be found in parts of England, and in vast tracts of Ireland. 

 In the latter country there are many hills, of very considerable 

 elevation, and in Scotland and England likewise, covered with 

 34* 



