PARING AND BURNING. 7 



preparations for doing on another part of the farm, may have 

 assisted, as the fire would have done, in the decomposition of the 

 vegetable matter. The lime is advised to be applied always 

 with the ashes, when the surface is pared and burned. They are 

 stated to work well together. A certain gentleman, about to 

 undertake the office of a judge, was advised, by another very 

 shrewd and experienced magistrate, to give his decisions without 

 giving the reasons for those decisions. Perhaps he saw that his 

 causality was deficient, or knew how often it happens in life 

 that for many exceedingly well-established facts it is very dif 

 ficult to give any reasons. I avail myself, in this case, of the 

 same sage advice. The effects of lime are in a degree capricious 

 and uncertain. I know that they must follow the general and 

 established laws of nature but, in spite of the confidence of 

 some men, it does not appear that these laws are yet fully under 

 stood. A deficiency of lime in the soil implies the necessity and 

 advantages of its application ; but the &quot; quantitive philosophy,&quot; 

 as it is called, leaves me sometimes at a loss, when I am told, on 

 the one hand, that the ashes of a crop of clover, on an acre, con 

 tain full three bushels of gypsum; and know, on the other hand, 

 that half a bushel of gypsum sown broadcast, in a rainy day, 

 upon an acre of clover, will often very much more than double 

 the crop. In this case, whatever may have been the effects of 

 the lime, or whatever, in any case, may be the advantages of 

 mixing lime with ashes, where land has been pared and burned, 

 (and I am not disposed to deny them,) the advantages of consum 

 ing the crops of turnips upon the ground, by folding and feeding 

 the sheep, are not matter of question. A high authority, on the 

 treatment of land which is pared and burned, advises &quot; to apply 

 the whole of the manure produced by the crops to the ground ; 

 and to manage it, generally, in the usual course of regularly-cul 

 tivated arable land.&quot; This corresponds with the shrewd advice, 

 to which I referred in a former number, given in respect to the 

 application of a new artificial manure, which was, that, in ad 

 dition to the artificial manure, you should apply to the ground 

 the quantity of other manure ordinarily used in such cultivation ; 

 and somewhat reminds one of the mode adopted by the Irish 

 servant, (an Irishman, of course,) whom his master desired to get 

 rid of a light guinea, and who reported to him, with much self- 



