514 PLYMOUTH SOCIETY. 



elusions on the subject. Intelligent agriculturists may have 

 displayed industry, skill, energy, and perseverance, without 

 stint. They may have evinced an honorable ambition for ex- 

 cellence, and a desire to bear away the prize ; — may have used 

 all diligence to enlarge the dimensions of their manure heaps ; 

 — but whatever else has been done, they seem to have con- 

 tributed little towards augmenting the stock of materials for 

 rural science. 



It has often been substantially said, and very justly, that 

 in agricultural as in many other active pursuits, art and 

 science should go hand-in-hand. It is equally true, that in no 

 department of his calling is this more necessary to the prac- 

 tical farmer, than in that of the preparation of his composts. 

 Let us look at the subject a little in this point of view. 



Composts may be considered well adapted to soils, when 

 they are formed by combining with the feces and liquids of 

 stock, diflerent loams, and vegetable matter in the form of 

 muck in a finely divided state, in quantities varying according 

 to the varying characters of those soils ; that is, as they are 

 more or less warm and light, on the one hand, or dark and 

 heavy on the other : those being designed for the latter in 

 which the loamy portion of their ingredients are made to pre- 

 ponderate, and the reverse. This method the practical good 

 sense of many farmers readily suggests to them ; and that it is, 

 so far as it goes, good husbandry, there can be little question. 

 The double purpose is thereby accomplished of benefiting crops, 

 and, at the same time, permanently improving the soil. 



There are, however, as is well known, other methods of im- 

 proving soils, not involving a course of manuring. The most 

 common of these are, perhaps, those of deepening — a gradual 

 process — draining, and mixing, or changing the relative propor- 

 tions of their respective ingredients, to some extent, with a 

 view to modify their relations to light, heat and moisture, and 

 neutralize the pernicious influence exerted by any single one 

 existing in great disproportion to the rest ; as sand, clay and 

 vegetable matter are often found to do. 



These are common operations at the present day, and they 

 are resorted to as remedies for serious evils ; remedies easily 

 discovered, fortunately, and often easily applied ; and this, too, 

 without the aid of chemical analysis. But in further fulfilling 



