180 MARCH. 



are railed at, know it as well as their philosophical 

 instructors ; but avarice, united with the baneful 

 effect of short, or no leases, make them practise 

 against their judgments. 



Paring and burning will, on all soils, give turnip 

 or cabbage; these fed on the land by sheep, will 

 secure barley or oats, and seeds ; the seeds fed with 

 sheep^ whether for a short or a longer duration, will 

 secure another crop of corn adapted to the soil ; 

 and in this stage of the progress, the soil will have 

 gained much more than it has lost. To instance 

 cases which I have seen, and to quote authorities 

 for these assertions, would be tiresome. I could 

 produce instances from more than half the counties 

 of the kingdom. 



It has been often contended, that burning lessens 

 the soil. If this happen any where, it must be in 

 peat ; yet, in the fens in Cambridgeshire, this hus- 

 bandry ha& been repeated once in eight years, for 

 a century and a half, and the proofs of a loss of 

 depth are extremely vague, in every instance I have 

 met with, and hardly to be distinguished from that 

 undoubted subsidence which takes place in drained 

 bogs of every description. In all other soils the 

 assertion may be safely and positively denied. I 

 have calcined pared turf, not calcareous, after care- 

 ful separation and weighing, and in a heat far ex- 

 ceeding what is ever given in denshiring heaps, and 

 re-weighing, found the loss too minute to be at- 

 tributed to any thing but loss of water intimately 

 combined, but driven off by heat, and re-exposing 



the 



