88 On Plaister of Paris. 



anecdotes and discussions, sufficiently amusing, to cheer 

 one through dissertations, on a topic apparently insipid 

 and unentertaining. 



After all that our present experience enables us to 

 say, we have much to learn on the qualities and effects of 

 the gypsum, as it relates to agriculture. I have known 

 it produce no effect for four years, and then throw up a 

 most astonishing vegetation ; and this after repeated 

 ploughings, for both winter and summer crops. In a 

 field now in clover, I perceive it most luxuriant, where 

 Indian corn hills were plaistered with no effect on the 

 corn, four or five years ago. This is one among many 

 instances I have had in my own fields, and have heard 

 from other farmers, of similar effects. /^A^/ 



Whatever be the cause, dew will remain on a part 

 of a grass field plaistered, an hour or two in a morning, 

 after itll moisture is evaporated from the part of the 

 same field not plaistered. I have also frequently seen' 

 this effect in my garden beds, which, if plaistered, will 



CkJ May not this be accounted for, by supposing that the 

 operative principle in the plaister, was an over-charge for the 

 fermentable substances then in the earth ; and that it did 

 not find enough of these substances to operate on, until the 

 time when it produced the vegetation here mentioned?. — ■ 

 [Vide note C^'J*]^ 



• I have on sevenil occasions obsened strong; tufts of clover, sometimes of wheat, when I have 



dunQ;ed a field, which had been plaistered on the com hills, wliere those hills had been. I supposed 



the dung aflbi-dcd a pabuhun lor the acid of the plaistei- which had been lavishly thro(*Ti on the 



hills ; and, until the dung wa« applied, remaiiied in combination. See v<A. 1, agricultural memoii-s, 



page 174. 



* R. P. 



lS^;ptanber, 1810., 



