234 WHAT I KNOW OF FAEMING. 



nant pool or bog in which it has lain so long, and 

 may need to be mixed with Lime, or Salt, or Ashes, 

 and subjected to the action of sun and frost, to ripen 

 and sweeten it. But it seems to me impossible that 

 such Muck should be applied to almost any reason- 

 ably dry land, without improving its consistency and 

 increasing its fertility. But all Muck is not the pro- 

 duct of decayed forest-leaves ; and that which was 

 formed of coarse, rank weeds and brakes, of rotten 

 wood and flags, or skunk cabbage, may be of very in- 

 ferior quality, so as hardly to repay the cost of dig- 

 ging and applying it. Science will yet enable us to 

 fix, at least approximately, the value of each deposit 

 of Muck, and so give a preference to the best. 



The Analysis of Soils, whereof much was heard 

 and whence much was hoped a few years since, seems 

 to have fallen into utter discredit, so that every 

 would-be popular writer gives it a passing fling or 

 kick. That any analysis yet made was and is worth- 

 less, I can readily concede, without shaking in the least 

 my conviction that soils will yet be analyzed, under 

 the guidance of a truer, profounder Science, to the 

 signal enlightenment and profit of their cultivators. 

 Here is a retired merchant, banker, doctor, or lawyer, 

 who has bought a spacious and naturally fertile but 

 worn-out, run-down farm, on which he proposes to 

 spend the remainder of his days. Of course, he must 

 improve and enrich it ; but with what ? and how ? 

 All the manure he finds, or, for the present, can make 

 on it, will hardly put the first acre in high condition, 



