MARCH.] PARING AND BURNING. 1 /() 



if any thing can, that paring and burning does 

 not lessen the soil, in its most excessive applica- 

 tion, and that it works a very great improvement 

 on loams. 



Sand. Hitt, a pracliser of this husbandry, say?, 

 that it improves sandy soils as much as any other ; 

 and I have seen some fields thus worked in Suf- 

 folk and in Cambridgeshire, and improved by it, 

 though under a course of crops by no means ad- 

 missible. There is not the least reason, from ana- 

 logy, to doubt the effect on this, or indeed on any 

 soil. 



Chalk. Here we have a much more ample field 

 of experience, for it has been, and is the common 

 method of breaking up downs in every part of Eng- 

 land. On the Cotteswold hills, in Gloucestershire, 

 it is the common husbandry, and often repeated. 

 The sheep-walks and warrens on the Wolds of the 

 East Riding of York, and of Lincoln, have thus 

 been brought most profitably into culture, though 

 not with the attention in cropping that ought to 

 have been given. In Hampshire and Wilts, the 

 same husbandry prevails. In these counties I have 

 been shewn lands that have been pronounced 

 ruined by this husbandry. The cropping was bad, 

 but still the rent had been doubled by the prac- 

 tice *. In Kent, Mr. Boys shall speak for him- 



* In the West Riding, Colonel St. Leger remarks, that if 

 burning wasted the soil, his lime-slone lands, only four inches 

 deep, would have been gone long ago, as it had been pared and 

 burnt for ag^s. Eastern Tour. 



N 2 self. 



