2,2 History of the English Landed Interest. 



or why Columella ranked the fertilising eflPects of pigeon higher 

 than poultry dung, or why he despised the guano of aquatic 

 birds and the excrement of swine. What too was the pecuHar 

 virtue of cytisus, by which it enhanced the value of the dung 

 from all quadrupeds who ate it ? 



We, whose chemical analysis and synthesis have taught us 

 the constituents ^ of both animal and vegetable life, can only 

 conclude that the same superstition prompted alike Columella's 

 classification and the modern belief that the presence of a he- 

 goat can banish abortion from the cowkeeper's byre. 



Let us briefly note in passing the scientific forestry evinced 

 by those three chapters devoted to the propagation and nurture 

 of trees from their birth either in the nursery or by budding 

 and grafting, to their transplantation in the coppice, where the 

 author leaves them as full-grown mouarchs of the forest, not 

 without a few silly comments on the baneful or beneficial 

 effects on human life of their various shadows. 



Chapters 4-0 refer to a subject which revives our keenest 

 interest in this work, for they consist not only of a masterly 

 dissertation on marls, but of frequent allusions to their presence 

 and use in the Britain of the author's period. The people of 

 Kent were the most civilised of all the British tribes, and their 

 system of agriculture included the marling of land. Later on 

 there are traces of an export trade in this earth, which was 

 thought much of by continental agriculturists. Corroborative 

 of this fact we may instance that an altar was found in the 

 17th century at Domburgh in Zealand dedicated to the 

 goddess Nehalennia by a British chalk merchant for her 

 preservation of his freight. 



In Pliny's careful treatise of the eight varieties - of marl, his 

 want of chemical knowledge is forcibly accentuated. Liming 

 and marling of land have been revolutionised by modern science. 

 We know now that the carbonate of calcium must be first 



^ Ammonia, phosphates, and lime are the chief fertilising ingredients 

 of a manure, and those mentioned by Pliny are all rich in these qualities. 

 The dung of swine, though rich in phosphates, does not contain much 

 ammonia in proportion to that of fowls. 



2 Plinius. Hint. Xat., lib. xvii. ch. 4. 



