( W } 
position of stable manures, or other vegetable of 
animal product. Their action is most favorable on 
wet and cold soils, and as a top dressing to natural 
meadows and turnip crops. 
The practice of paring and burning the slicyilla 
of the earth, has been much used, and warmly re- 
commended by the [rish ; and in their land of bogs, 
as in the marshes of Holland, where infertility aris- 
es from excess of vegetable matter, it may be use- 
ful; but to burn the surfaces of sandy, gravelly, or 
even of dry clay soils, would be to lose sight of all 
sound theory. : 
Soils, in general, may be divided into two kinds, 
sand and clay: The defect of the one, is want of 
cohesion between ifs parts; that of the other, an ex- 
cessive, or superabundant cohesion. But vegetable 
matter is, as we have seen, a remedy for both ; and 
to accumulate this, is the constant endeavor of eve- 
ry enlightened agriculturist. Yet are we advised 
to destroy this vegetable matter by fire, and to sub- 
stitute for it a small portion of ashes, as more fa- 
vorable to vegetation than the soil itself! But in 
what will these ashes differ from those found in our 
chimneys, and of which enough may be had? In 
nothing, excepting that they may possess somewhat 
more alkaline salt ;(1) a circumstance which, if the 
(1) De Saussure’s experiments prove, that the stems of trees (other things being 
equal) produce less of this salt than the branches ; the branches less than the twigs . 
and the twigs less than the leaves. M. Perthuys has formed a table of the relative 
alkaline products of plants and trees. By this table it appears, that the leaves and 
stems of Indian corn give by the quintal eight pounds thirteen ounces, the oak one. 
pound five ounces, the pine fiye ounces, 
