142 APPENDIX C. 



less where it transitorily comes in my way to 

 speak of salts and ferments) I leave to those of 

 this learned society, who have already given 

 such admirable essays of what they will be more 

 able to accomplish upon that useful and curious 

 theme ; and, therefore, I beg leave that I may 

 confine myself to my more proper element, the 

 earth, which though the lowest and most infe- 

 rior of them all, yet is so subservient and ne- 

 cessary to vegetation, that without it, there 

 could hardly be any such thing in nature." He 

 then gives a long account of different strata of 

 earths, &c. in which some of the phraseology 

 sounds strangely to modern ears for instance, 

 "marsh-earth," is said to be "the most churl- 

 ish," and marl, " of a cold, sad nature." The 

 two following passages are among those which 

 cannot be read without a smile, "If, upon ex- 

 cavating a pit, the mould you exhaust do more 

 than fill it again, Virgil tells us 'tis a good au- 

 gury ; upon which Laurembergius affirms, that 

 at Wellemberg, in Germany, where the mould 

 lies so close, as it does not replenish the foss 

 out of which it has been dug, the corn which is 

 sown in that country soon degenerates into rye; 

 and what is still more remarkable, that the rye 

 sown in Thuringia (where the earth is less com- 

 pacted) reverts, after three crops, to be wheat 

 again." 



