24 On Paring and Burning. 



for I take it for granted that no farmer would think of laying out 

 on such poor thin soils as the one from which the ashes were 

 obtained something like 21. 10s. per acre for bone-dust alone. 



My agricultural friend, no doubt, was perfectly right in his 

 practice, but not quite in his theoretical speculations respecting 

 the utility of phosphates for root-crops. Perhaps he would have 

 had a more favourable opinion of phosphates, if he had been 

 told that the red vegetable ashes which he was in the habit of 

 using in all probability contained more phosphates than a very 

 heavy dressing of the best superphosphate, or perhaps 20 tons 

 of good farmyard manure. 



Moreover, there are good reasons for the fact that, on land 

 which is well adapted to be regularly pared and burned, farm- 

 yard manure, guano, superphosphates, or other artificial manures, 

 often do no good to turnips, or, at any rate, do not improve root- 

 crops in the same degree as vegetable ashes. I shall revert to 

 this subject again, after having given an account of the ashes 

 from the second and stiffer field in our neighbourhood. 



Composition of Red, or so-called Vegetable, Ashes from a Soil in 

 the neighbourhood of Cirencester. 



The red ashes from the College farm may serve to give a fair 

 idea of the composition of the ashes which will be obtained on 

 paring and burning, when the season is dry, and there is suffi- 

 cient vegetable matter in the soil to keep the fire alive for six 

 or eight days in small but well-covered heaps. Such ashes, of 

 course, contain a large proportion of burnt clay. On the other 

 hand, the subjoined analysis may serve to represent the com- 

 position of the vegetable ashes which will be produced in a wet 

 or showery season on stiff soils of a wet description. There is a 

 good deal of land of that character in the neighbourhood of 

 Cirencester. Except in a very dry season it is impossible to get 

 the clay sufficiently dry for burning. It often happens, there- 

 fore, that such land cannot be properly burned, that is to say, 

 little of the soil itself can be burned. The ashes produced under 

 these circumstances are, of course, much less in quantity, but at 

 the same time a great deal more valuable, than the preceding 

 ones. 



This will appear clearly from the following table, in which is 

 stated the composition of the ashes obtained on burning (prin- 

 cipally) the vegetable matter of a soil from a field in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Cirencester. 



The composition of the soil before burning has been given 

 above. 



