ON THE COMPOSITION OF SOILS, &C. 



" mere poverty of a soil is not a criterion where- 

 " by we can judge ; we must consider what hath 

 " made it poor. If it is naturally so, we may 

 " almost infallibly conclude that it will become 

 " better by being manured with lime. If it is 

 " artificially poor, or exhausted by continual 

 " cropping, we may conclude that lime will en- 

 " tirely destroy it. We apprehend that it is this 

 " natural kind of poverty only, which Mr. An- 

 " derson says in his Essays on Agriculture, may 

 " be remedied by lime \ for we can scarce think 

 " that experience would direct any person to 

 " put lime upon land already exhausted. His 

 " words are, Calcareous matters act as power- 

 " fully upon land that is naturally poor, as upon 

 " land that is more richly impregnated with 

 " those substances that tend to produce a 

 " luxuriant vegetation. Writers on agriculture 

 " have long been in the custom of dividing ma- 

 " nures into two classes; viz. enriching manures, 

 " or those that tended directly to render the 

 " soil more prolific, however sterile it may be; 

 " among the foremost of which was dung : 

 " exciting manures, or those that were supposed 

 66 to have a tendency to render the soil more 

 48 prolific, merely by acting upon those enriching 

 " manures that had been formerly in the soiV 

 " and giving them a new stimulus, so as to en- 



