iSIKtOVINO POOR S0IL9. $Q^ 



There are Tarious processes found adapted to paitlcular observations 

 soils, the introduction of which may reward the industry of ^^^ enquiries 



J respecting the 



tne nuSDandman. improvement 



1st. Thus the wolds of this country have been enriched of poor soils. 

 by the cultivation of saint-foin, and tons of hay are now 

 produced, where one blade of grass could scarcely have 

 been found a few years ago. 



2ndly, Thistles, which are capable of deriving nourish- 

 ment, and growing to a large size, where no other plant 

 can exist : these by the exuviae, or remains they leave, and 

 the protection they afford to other plants and many 

 animalculae, tend to ameliorate the soil; but, whether they 

 should be suffered to grow to a crop, and advantage taken 

 of their product, or ploughed in as manure, is a question 

 which I shall not agitate at present. 



Srdly, The cultivation of spinach may be recommended 

 as calculated to answer the same end, the prickly kind being 

 the hardiest is to be preferred. Succulent plants im- 

 poverish the ground but little, because they derive a great 

 part of their nourishment from the atmosphere, as may be 

 easily proved from the alee tribe, which will lie out of the 

 ground for a great length of time without being hurt, draw- 

 ing their nourishment from the atmosphere alone; and 

 certainly these fleshy succulent plants, when ploughed in, 

 will afford a very considerable supply of food for more 

 useful plants *. 



4thlyf Buck-wheat ajso, and fumitory, a common weed 

 upon chalky soils, may be converted to every useful pur- 

 poses as a stimulus to vegetation; for the latter, when 

 burnt, affords an uncommon quantity of the fixed alkali, so 

 well known to be a most powerful stimulus to the growth 

 of plants ; and as the poorest soils may, by a particular 

 management in the use of stimuli, be made productive, so 

 an alternate crop of such plants with corn, seems to be 

 an eligible mode of cultivating poor soils, where lime and 

 manure are not to be hadi=. 



* " All succulent plants make ground fir.e and of a good 

 quality." Fide Biherg' (Economy of Nature. 



t In the 3d Volume of the American Transactions, there is a 

 paper on the cultivation of the eastern shore Bean, for the express 

 purpose of being ploughed in as a manure. 



5thly. 



