MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS 



ON 



PLAISTER OF PARIS 



THE prejudices for and against this manure are 

 equally violent; and their is no way of correcting them, 

 but by the results drawn from sober and continued 

 experience. In Germany, where this fossil has been 

 the longest known and used, opinions have been very 

 opposite, and many of them very absurd and ridicu- 

 lous. Not only sorcery and witchcraft have been charg- 

 ed on those who used the plaister, but it has been said 

 by some wonderfully wise people there, that it produced 

 or attracted thunder and lightning. Some of the petty 

 princes of that country have made edicts against the use 

 of it, urged, perhaps, by the bigotry of its opponents, 

 and the unfounded German adage : "that it makes rich 

 fathers and poor children." The peasants have, how- 

 ever, in opposition to these weak and tyrannical prohi- 

 bitions, sown the pkdster on their fields in the night. I 

 have Seen a treatise in German, on the subject of gyp- 

 sum, as applied to agriculture, containing inany excel- 

 lent observations and useful lessons, mixed with some 



