314 Miscellaneous. [May, 



and is rendered particularly distinct by the light fawn colour at the sides 

 of the neck and behind the shoulders. The perpendicular stroke of the 

 cross is 2| inches wide upon the back of the neck, and two inches imme- 

 diately behind the shoulders, while further back, it is wider, but indistinct. 

 The cross band is two inches and a half wide, and very distinct, until lost 

 on the shoulders in the mixture of rufous and grisly grey of that part. 



The hill fox is a very handsome animal. Its colours are, for the most 

 part, bright, and often well defined at their edges, offering a strong con- 

 trast with those adjoining, or, as upon the neck and anterior part of the 

 thighs, separated from one another by a narrow distinct line of white. 



It seems to be intermediate between the Vulpes vulgaris (common fox) 

 and the cross fox, which, indeed, may, after all, be probably varieties of 

 the same species. 



As nothing is known of the habits and manners of this animal, it would 

 be conferring a boon upon zoological science, if any person, well acquainted 

 with the subject, would describe them. It is said to be a native of the 

 lower range of the Himalayan mountains. 



2. — On the Soil suitable for Cotton, Tobacco, Sugar, and the Tea plant. 



By H. PlDDINGTON. 



[Read at the meeting of the Agricultural Society, March 1836.] 



I preface what I have to say to the Society on the soils placed on the 

 table with a few remarks, which I trust may be thought worth placing on 

 record. My object in doing so is again to impress upon members of what 

 vital importance it is to the advancement of the agricultural interests of 

 the country, and to the safety and success of every agricultural specula- 

 tion, to procure samples of all soils from other countries in which valuable 

 products grow. 



The same climate and soil are, we know, in a greater or less degree the 

 essential requisites for obtaining the production of one country in another ; 

 and for our present purpose we may perhaps say that plants find their food 

 in the soil, and are enabled to digest it by the climate. The}' do digest, 

 we know, and this in the strictest sense of the word. 



The popular ideas of climates are vague enough, but it may be roundly 

 asserted, that scarcely one who uses the word knows what is really meant 

 by soil ; or rather what is really meant by " the same soil." This arises 

 from our vague notion of the thins? itself. The very words used to dis- 

 tinguish soils express, more frequently than any thing else, their appear- 

 ance, and some of their physical qualities ; scarcely any their essential — 

 that is their chemical properties. We talk of light and heavy, of sandy 

 and clayey, moist and dry soils, which are all physical properties, and two 

 clayey or two sandy soils may be actually as different as light and dark- 

 ness from each other! The words ferruginous and calcareous are, it is 

 true, chemical terms, but such vague ones that they designate whole classes 

 of soils, of which each sort is widely different from its neighbours. The 

 tea soils and the Arracan tobacco soils on the table are both ferruginous 

 soils, but differing as widely as soils can do ; for the iron in the one is a 

 carbonate of iron, and in the other the red oxide of iron. 



Cotton — Nothing then but a sample of the soil and a correct analysis of 

 it can assure the speculator, that while he is trying to rear any given fo- 

 reign product, he is not (misled by loose names) absolutely blundering in 

 darkness, and attempting an impossibility. I begin with Cotton as a most 

 prominent example, though my proofs on the subject are not quite so full 

 as I could wish ; and I shall surprise the Society not a little when I say, 

 that all the expensive efforts which have been made hitherto to obtain 

 good cotton have probably failed from this one cause, that we have been 

 at work on the wrong soil ! How far, with the American cottons, differen- 

 ces of climate may also have operated is not here the place to examine.. 



