BURNING LAND. 11 



into hard lumps ; and a good deal was completely vitrified, the 

 whole presenting the appearance of the floor of a brickkiln after 

 the burned bricks had been removed. The process here had evi 

 dently been carried too far, and the experiment disappointed the 

 enterprising undertaker a failure, for which he suggested many 

 causes besides the true one. I have always found that the 

 strong back for very strong it must be to bear all that is put 

 upon it of a certain nameless personage in theology was an ex 

 ceedingly convenient repository for certain persons to put their 

 sins upon, which their own inordinate self-esteem would not 

 allow them to ascribe to the proper source ; so my friend, in this 

 case, had half a dozen reasons to give respecting the season, and 

 other extraneous hinderances, in place of the true reasons why 

 his experiment failed ; and, like a brave veteran, the hero of 

 many fights, in the midst of his discomfiture, his heart still 

 glowed with the confidence of ultimate success. Such courage 

 and perseverance deserve a better reward than I fear he will 

 obtain. There are some chemists, learned in the highest degree, 

 who speak with confidence of pounded glass being used as a 

 manure ; and another, eminent in his peculiar science, speaks of 

 the power of a plant, in its wonderful action of growth, to de 

 compose the sides of the glass vessel in which it is grown, and 

 appropriate portions of it for its nutriment. I believe it. He is 

 a brave man who will presume to say what cannot be done. A 

 single imprisoned drop of water, by the power of fire or of frost, 

 may rend a mountain asunder. The power of vegetable action 

 is as tenacious and indomitable as the Creator could make it, for 

 the purposes for which he designed it ; and it is only another 

 form in which that wonderful Power, which can command stones 

 that they shall be made bread, displays itself, that enables the 

 plant, which is itself to become bread to man, to extract, even 

 from the inert stones themselves, its own proper nutriment and 

 substance, and convert them into a principle of life. 



I do not know where better than in this place to insert a letter 

 received from a most intelligent and practical farmer in Stafford 

 shire, which will be read with interest, and which relates partic 

 ularly to this mode of improvement. 



&quot; I fear it will not be in my power to give you any satisfac 

 tory or decisive information as to the result of burning the Need- 

 wood Forest clay sand. What I have done has not been by 



