6 



A DISCOURSE 



not to be rejected ; the looseness of it admitting the refreshment of 

 showers, renders it not improper for trees and plants which require more 

 than ordinary moisture. Declining from this in perfection, is the darkish 

 gray or tawny, which, the deeper your mine, rises veined with yellow, 

 and sometimes reddish, till it end in pale ; and if you penetrate yet 

 farther, commonly in sand or gritty stone. 



Of a second class, is mould of an obscure colour, also, more deUcate 

 grain, tender, chessom, and mellow ; clear of stones and grittiness, with 

 an eye of loam and sand, which renders it light enough, yet moist ; of 

 all other the most desirable for flowers and the coronary garden. 



To this we add a yet more obscure and sandy mould, accompanied 

 with a natural fatness ; and this, though rarer, is incomparable for all 

 sorts of fruit-trees. 



A third participates of both the former ; fattish, yet interspersed 

 with small flints and pebbles, not to be altogether neglected. 



A fourth is totally sandy, and that of divers colours, with sometimes a 

 bottom of gravel, now and then rock, and not seldom clay ; and, as the 

 foundations are, so it is more or less retentive of moisture, and tolerable 

 for culture ; but all sand does easily admit of heat and moisture, and yet 

 for that not much the better ; for either it dismisses and lets them pass 

 too soon, and so contracts no ligature, or retains them too long, especially 

 where the bottom is of clay, by which it parches or chills, producing 

 nothing but moss, and disposes to cankerous infu-mities ; but if, as some- 

 times it fortunes, that the sand have a surface of more genial mould, 

 and a bottom of gravel or loose stone^ though it do not long maintain 

 the virtue it receives from heaven, yet it produces forward-springing, 

 and is parent of sweet grass, whichj though soon burnt up in dry wea- 

 ther, does as soon recover with the fu'st rain that falls. 



■ Of pure and sheer sand, there is white, black, bluish, red, yellow, 

 harsher, and milder, and some mere dust in appearance, none of them to 

 be desired alone ; but the gtay-black and ash-coloured, and that which 

 frequently is found in heathy commons, or the travelling kind, volatile, 

 and exceedingly light, is the most insipid and worst of all. I do not here 



