RULES AND SUGGESTIONS IN HUSBANDRY. 51 



These data are assumed from recollection, and may 

 not he precisely correct. 



24. The means of preserving and of augmenting 

 the fertility of the soil are sufficiently indicated in 

 the preceding suggestions. They consist mainly in 

 manuring, draining, the admixture of earthy mate- 

 rials, and th alternation of crops. 



25. Stable and fold-yard dung is most profitably 

 applied in an unfermented or partially fermented 

 state, and to hoed and autumn-ripening crops. Fer- 

 mentation diminishes the fertilizing properties of ma- 

 nure. If this fermentation takes place in the soil, 

 the gases, the volatile portion which first escapes 

 from the putrifying mass, are retained in the mould, 

 and serve to feed the crop. If fermentation takes 

 place in the yard or upon the surface, the gases are 

 wasted, and the dung undergoes farther loss from 

 the rains which ordinarily leach it. Long manure 

 should be spread broadcast, and well buried by the 

 plough. 



26. Short manure, or that which has undergone 

 fermentation, is most beneficial when harrowed in 

 upon arable lands, or spread upon the surface of 

 grass-grounds. 



27. Old meadows may be kept in a productive 



the clouds, suspended over the ocean, come in contact with the 

 basaltic summits of the Cordillera. A little higher, near La 

 Bandarila, the nutritive fruit of the banana-tree comes no longer 

 to maturity. In this foggy and cold region, therefore, want 

 spurs on the Indian to labour, and excites his industry. At the 

 height of San Miguel, pines begin to mingle with the oaks, 

 which are found by the traveller as high as the elevated plains 

 of Perote, where he beholds the delightful aspect of fields sown 

 with wheat. Eight hundred metres higher (two thousand and 

 six hundred feet), the coldness of the climate will no longer ad- 

 mit of the vegetation of oaks ; and pines alone cover the rock, 

 who.-e summits enter the zone of eternal snow. Thus, in a few 

 hours, the naturalist, in this miraculous country, ascend? the 

 whole scale of vegetation, from the heliconia and the ban^n* 

 plant, whose glossy leaves swell out into extrar rdinary dimet 

 eion.s, to the stunted parachyma of the resinous trees." 



