CHAP. XXIV.] CLEARING BY BURNING. 367 



soil seems to be almost entirely made up of tufa- 

 ceous and pumices tone lapilli ; and it appears to me 

 to be very probable that the vegetable earth which 

 must have existed in such places has nitrated 

 through the porous subsoil, and it may therefore 

 be expected that a judicious over and underworking 

 would greatly improve the land. I will make one 

 observation here, which, although it cannot be new 

 to practical farmers, is at variance with the opinion 

 of a great many colonists who are not farmers, and 

 may, perhaps, be useful. The colonists to whom 

 I allude believe that burning the vegetation which 

 covers the land, whether consisting of fern, bushes, 

 or forest, improves its condition. In large tracts 

 of alluvial soil, which is per se generally rich, as 

 on the plains of the Mississippi, in the deltas and 

 courses of the Rhine and Danube, the burning of 

 the forest must certainly be the quickest way of 

 clearing the land, and the loss of vegetable matter 

 in the process of burning, where there is a great 

 depth of alluvial soil, cannot be of any great import- 

 ance : but in New Zealand the plains are not, 

 strictly speaking, the produce of the rivers; they 

 are a table-land, composed of a stiff clay, which can 

 scarcely be worked, and which was deposited as we 

 now find it, not by the rivers, which are too insig- 

 nificant to produce such results, but at the original 

 formation and heaving up of the land. At the 

 borders and outlets of the rivers there is only a 

 small extent of true alluvial soil, the rest derives all 



