586 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



occurred to me within a short period. There was picked up, 

 in the cultivated part of the garden of the place where I reside, 

 a fragment of a common green glass bottle, (made as such 

 ware is, by melting sand and ashes together in a strong heat,) 

 upon which, while molten, there had been impressed a seal or 

 stamp to mark the identity of the wine it was to contain, with 

 the inscription, "P. Fancuil, 1741'' — the same Peter Faneuil, 

 no doubt, to whom Boston is indebted for the material struct- 

 ure of the " Cradle of Liberty." Circumstances of occupancy, 

 not necessary here to be recapitulated, make it certain that 

 that bottle must have been in that garden more than seventy 

 years, and in all probability, one crop after another had grown 

 successively in close proximity to it, for that space of time. It 

 bore abundant and deep marks of the solvent power aluded to, 

 in marked erosions, of every degree of depth from cavities to a 

 mere removal of the enamel or polish. 



Some of the varieties of minerals common in all soils have 

 soda instead of potash. Lime is attainable in soils which give 

 no indication to one who looks for any specimen, however 

 minute, of limestone, and where no limerock ledge may exist 

 within a hundred miles. Sienite, for example, which is a 

 common ledge rock of this State, variously known as Quincy or 

 Gloucester granite, although really no granite at all, contains, 

 as one of its three constituents, the mineral, hornblende, which 

 gives the complexion, whether black or buff colored, to the 

 stone. Hornblende contains eighteen or twenty per cent, of 

 magnesia and fourteen or more of lime. 



Without elaborating or exemplifying at any greater length 

 the universally admitted facts that the inorganic part of soils, 

 and the rocks from which they are derived, have all the ingre- 

 dients, alkalis, earths, acids and oxides which are found in the 

 composition of the plants themselves, let us continue a further 

 examination into the constituents of vegetable growths. While 

 in soils, the organic part has a very small ratio to the whole 

 mass, the reverse is remarkably the case in plants. We have 

 spoken of a soil naturally fertile as having ten per ce'ntum of 

 combustible or organic material. There are very few plants 

 which will have an amount of ashes equal to one-fifth of their 

 dried weight, while some have as small a proportion as one- 

 hundredth. Different portions of a plant, its bark, leaves, 



