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sive power, specific gravity, and power of absorbing water, of many 
of the building stones most largely employed in England. 
I consider this Report as of the highest value, in showing the 
general advantages which may be derived from connecting scientific 
knowledge with practical arts; and I trust we shall hear no more of 
such discreditable and unfounded assertions as, not long ago, passed 
uncontradicted, at a meeting of an architectural society in London, 
that Stonehenge is made of statuary marble. 
GEOLOGICAL COMMITTEE OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL SCCIETY. 
The appointment of a Geological Committee, by the English 
Agricultural Society, at their meeting in Oxford, in July last, shows 
the sense entertained by that numerous body of landed proprietors, 
and cultivators of the soil of England, of the important services 
which may be rendered to them, by the application of geological 
knowledge to the improvement of the productive capabilities of the 
land. 
It is well known to geologists that an almost unbounded supply 
of mineral manure may be found in the sub-strata, which in very 
many districts are composed of ingredients different from those of 
the surface. So constant are the characters of many of the beds 
of the geological groups which pass in long and narrow bands from 
one side of England to the other, that a single experiment, carefully 
conducted, on any one stratum of each formation, with a view to 
ameliorate its soil, by an admixture of the ingredients of some other 
adjacent stratum, will afford an example which may be followed with 
similar results in distant parts of the kingdom, through which this 
same stratum passes, in its course across the island. 
Experiments, therefore, conducted by the owners and occupiers 
of land, under the advice of this Geological Committee, aided by 
the facilities for the analysis of soils now afforded by the laboratory 
of the Museum of CZconomic Geology, may shortly enable us to 
realize at least some share of the success that attended Lavoisier’s 
application of chemistry to agriculture in France*. 
* Tt was said of Lavoisier, that in ten years he doubled the produce 
of his land in grain, while he quintupled the number of his flocks. No 
doubt this report is much exaggerated. 
