50 TRANSACTIONS. 



also, mentions the practice of mixing earths of different qualities as 

 having been performed with great success by his uncle a learned, 

 skilful and industrious husbandman, who had thus enriched, both his 

 wheat fields and his vineyards. 



The present age boasts loudly of its progress and improvement over 

 the past. HoAV much improvement and advancement have the farmers 

 of this 19th century made in the use of barnyard manure and the 

 ordinary modes of composting, over that In use by the Grecians and 

 Romans 2000 years ago ? The preparation of poudrette from night- 

 soil was known long ago to the Chinese. Ashes were used and pre- 

 ferred to barn-yard manure long since by the Britons, as. well as by 

 the Romans. In the early part of the middle ages, calcareous sand 

 was used by the English farmers as a manure. Even sea-sand was 

 employed as a fertilizer in the Counties of Devon and Cornwall, for 

 the improvement of their arable lauds. Carbonate of soda, or of 

 potash we have seen from the history of the past, has been used In 

 steeping seeds and as a fertilizer ; and several kinds of saline sub- 

 stances and preparations have long been used in Briton, both, for 

 preparing seeds, and as fertilizers. An agricultural writer 300 years 

 ago made a record, that some farmers believed coleworts, — a species 

 of cabbage, — grew best in salt ground, and, therefore, they employed 

 salt cis a manure — also, saltpetre and ashes. A writer near the close 

 of the 17th century, says, "Rains and dews, cold and dry winters, 

 with store of snow, I reckon equal to the richest manures, Impregnated 

 as they are, with celestial nitre ; and I firmly believe that were salt- 

 petre, I mean fictitious nitre, to be obtained In plenty, we should 

 need but little other composts to meliorate our grounds." 



A compound of lime and common salt. It Is said, was recommended 

 more than two hundred years ago by Glauber, a distinguished German 

 chemist, in his hints on Agriculture, as most fit for dunging lands 

 and to be used instead of animal excrements ; and the same prepara- 

 tion was described and commended toward the close of the seventeenth 

 century by Christopher Packe, as the cheapest of all mixtures for the 

 enriching of poor and barren land. 



Gypsum began to be used as a manure after the middle of the last 

 century ; — -so, also, did fish, since when, they have been extensively 

 employed. Guano, though universally used by the Peruvians as far 

 back as their history extends, was not commercially introduced into 

 England till 1840. So of crushed bones, and many of the artificial 



