30 



A DISCOURSE 



proper for annuals and exotic plants, which having but little time to 

 live, refuse no assistance, whilst trees of longer duration care not much 

 for accelerations. 



I shall here, then, begin with an experiment I have been taught by a 

 learned person of this illustrious body, (Dr. Beal,)from whom I have long 

 since received the choicest documents upon this and many curious sub- 

 jects. And first, I think it will be evinced, as constant and undeniable, 

 that amongst the mechanical aids, (wherein stercoration has no hand,) 

 that of pulverizing the earth by contusion, and breaking it with the 

 plough or spade, is of admirable effect, to dispose it for the reception of 

 all the natural impregnations we have been discoursing upon. For the 

 earth, especially if fresh, has a certain magnetism in it, by which it at- 

 tracts the salt, power, or virtue (call it either) which gives it life, and is 

 the reason of all the labour and stir we keep about it, to sustain us ; all 

 dungings, and other sordid temperings, being but the succedaneums to 

 this improvement, which, of all other, makes its return of fruit, or what- 

 soever else it bears, without imparting any of those ill and pernicious 

 qualities which we sensibly discover from forced grounds, and that not 

 only in the plants which they produce, but in the very animals which 

 they feed and nourish. 



1 know Laurembergius (somewhere) denies this, and that animals in 

 preparing chyle, transmute, alter, and insume what is only their proper 

 aliment, rejecting all that is superfluous ; but as our early asparagus, 

 cauliflowers, and divers roots, manifestly refute it, so does the taste of 

 the flesh of fowl, and the milk of cattle that feed on the wild garlic, 

 fenny-grass, and other rank things, not here to insist on their sweet and 

 delicate relish upon change to a more odoriferous pasture. But to the 

 experiment : 



Take of the most barren earth you can find, drained, if you please, of 

 all its nitrous salts, and masculine parts ; reduce it to a fine powder ; 

 (which may be done even in large proportion, by a rude engine, letting 

 fall a kind of hammer or beetle, at the motion of awheel ;) let this pul- 

 verized earth, and for the time incessantly agitated, be exposed, for a 

 summer and winter, to the vicissitudes and changes of the seasons and in^ 

 fluences of heaven : by this labour, and rest from vegetation, you will 



