462 APPENDIX. 



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grwsest fiarts of the sjnoke. That which flies out of the chimney is 

 tiie ut'St part oi all. 



* In case of a w-aut of wood wherewith to beg-in the fire, the fire 

 may be lighted precisely as in the case of flaring and burning. If 

 the kiln be large, the oblong- square is the best figure. About ten 

 Jeet wide, .-! it Man can fling- the earth easily over every 



part. The mode they pursue in England, when there is no ivood, is 

 to make a sort of building in the kiln with turfs, ami leave airholes at 

 the comers of the walls, till the fire be well begun. But this is 

 tedious work; ami is in this Country wholly unnecessary. Care must, 

 however, be taken, that the fire be well lighted. The" matter put in 

 at first should be such as is of the lightest description; so that a 

 body of earth on fire may be obtained, before it be too heavily 

 leaded. 



The burning being completed, having got the quantity you want, 

 Jet the kiln remain. 1 he fire will continue to work, until all is ashes. 

 If you want to uac the ashes sooner, open the kiln. They will be 

 cold enough to lemove in a week.* 



A practice has long prevailed in Europe, of paring and burning 



soils, for the purpose of improving their texture and increasing their 



ierUhty. Ou clay -lands, and such as contain too much vegetable 



i*, we comv;\e the process might be auvisable, if not too ex- 



xe. Its i fleet on clays is to destroy the auhesive quality of the 



soil, as the cur: h burned becomes rather of a silicious texture; and 



at the same time the surface is much enriched by the operation. In 



the other case, it is c se redundancy of vegetable 



matter, as well as to enrich the soil. The operation is performed in 



the following maniu-r : 



When the ground is in a good sward of grass let it be carefully 

 turned over with the plough; the irons of which should be well 

 sharpened. Let the plough run about three inches deep. Then 

 cross-plough with a very sharp coulter, and the sward will all be cut 

 into squares of about ten or twelve inches. Set these square chunks 

 up edgways, by leaning two together, and they will soon dry. When 

 well dried, build a part of them up in the form of little ovens, at the 

 distance of about eighteen feet each way. These are all to have a 

 litlle opening or door, at a common windward side, for the air to 

 enter, and another opening- above, for the smoke to pass off. On 

 some dry day, when the wind is fur for blowing into the holes below, 

 place some straw or other dry rubbish into the holes, and set fire to 

 it. As soon as the fires have got fully going in each of the heaps, let 

 the holes in the tops be sloped up, for the purpose of retaining the 

 smoke, and keep gradually building up the heaps as the fire pene- 

 traiesthem, until all the chunks of eari.li are piled up round them; 

 and when the heaps have fully burned, and sufficiently cooled, they 

 are to be evenly spread over the ground, and ploughed in. 



In some parts of Greatbritain it lias been the practice to burn peat- 

 earth, in a manner very similar to that before described for burning 

 clay, and the ashes were used for top-dressings; but we believe this 

 practice has mostly given way to tiiat of roting or decomposing peat 

 in compost; as follows: You form the compost-heap of about one- 

 half of peat, a fourth of lime, and a fourth of barn-clung-, and these are 

 to be separately laid along in a manner most convenient to be after- 

 wards thrown into the compost-heap in their proper proportions. 

 You commence at one end with spreading a layer of peat on the 

 ground, say, ten feet square and four inches in depth; then a layer 

 of lime on this, and another of barn -dung, each two inches thick; 

 then another layer 'of peat, as before, and then the lime and barn- 



