The Scientific Agriculture of the Period, 281 



raintow seems to rest, there the mould is more roscid and 

 fertile. So far it would seem that the scientific inquirer had 

 been grossly imposed upon by the husbandman, and that the 

 former had tried to explain on philosophical grounds phenomena 

 which he had been deceived into believing were natural, but 

 which were really the emanations of some imaginative brain. 



But Evelyn himself was too familiar with Nature to base 

 his philosophy on information received from second-hand 

 sources. There was much exaggeration, but a penetrating 

 germ of truth in the supposition that certain soils had a smell 

 of the juice of vegetables, " as though they were already con- 

 cocted and prepared " with the elements of plant life. To 

 another sense, that of taste, Evelyn attributes a power to 

 detect the peculiar salts which are common to soils and plants ; 

 and in both these instances he was on the verge of Liebig's 

 great discovery. 



Evelyn also estimated at their true worth the processes of 

 cultivation and stercoration. " It is verily almost a Miracle," 

 he says, " to see how the same Land without any other Manure 

 or Culture will bring forth and even luxuriate ; and that the 

 bare raking and combing only of a Bed of Earth, now one way, 

 then another, as to the Regions of Heaven, and Polar Aspects, 

 may diversifie the annual Production. Having said thus much 

 of the Natural, I should now come to Artificial helps by appli- 

 cation of Dungs and Composts ; and indeed ' stude ut magnum 

 sterquilinium habeas ' was old and good advice." 



He also recognised that, if a soil was drained entirely of its 

 "nitrous salts and masculine parts," it would become sterile ; 

 and further, that its fertility could be replaced immediately by 

 the application of manures, leas suddenly by leaving it fallow 

 for a time. The secret of this phenomenon was discoverable in 

 a certain fertilising salt common to soils, vegetabl'fes, and 

 manures, and which could be artificially transposed from one 

 to another of these three substances when occasion required. 

 The principal vehicle whereby this transposition of the salt 

 was effected is rain-water. By learning which manures con- 

 tained this salt in greatest abundance, the process of agricul- 

 ture could alone be brought to perfection. 



