MODERN HIGH 



broken up as finely as possible, arid, together with the ashes of the 

 combustibles, plowed in a wholesale manner deeply and thorough- 

 ly into the field. 



Our object in burning the clay is to make it undergo a radical 

 chemical transformation, in the course of which it loses its water of 

 combination and its power of absorbing and retaining moisture. 



If, on the one hand, an excess of clay renders our agricultural 

 operations so arduous, we find on the other that an excess of sand in 

 the soil, and a consequent lack of clay, makes them impossible. 



The most effectual method, therefore, of dealing with a sandy 

 soil is to add to it a sufficient quantity of clay to hold together the 

 fertilizing and nourishing agents, whether naturally present or arti- 

 ficially introduced ; for unless this is done, all the manurial elements 

 (having nothing to retain them) will be washed from the soil by the 

 rains and completely lost. 



Where clays are not readily forthcoming, the use of marls and 

 lime must be resorted to with an unsparing hand ; the latter accom- 

 panied with as much as possible of the green refuse leaves, stalks, 

 etc., etc., from the various crops. 



It may even in special cases, and for a certain period, be advisa- 

 ble to use up all the lower orders of green crops entirely as manures 

 for this kind of soil, in preference to keeping or selling them for 

 food ; more advantage being likely to accrue from the beneficial ac- 

 tion exercised by their decomposition than is represented by any mo- 

 mentary profit arising from their sale or consumption. 



These vegetable substances should be very evenly distributed over 

 the surface of the fields and plowed in simultaneously with the lime. 

 Their beneficial effects arise not only from their power of retention, 

 but also from their attracting and fixing the nitrogen in the air and 

 the soil by the processes already described. 



In considering all that has been written in the preceding pages 

 upon the combinations and transformations that go on in the soils 

 their physical and chemical defects, and the means by which we are 

 to remedy them ; and in examining that important question of ma- 

 nures wliich we are now about to open, there is one essential element 



