A DISCOURSE 



and composts whatsoever ^ But to return to dust again. By the toil we 

 have mentioned, it is found that soil may be so strangely altered from its 

 former nature, as to render the harsh and most uncivil clay obsequious 

 to the husbandman, and to bring forth fruits and plants, which other- 

 wise require the lightest and hoUowest moulds. 



In other cases and affections, the earth may be likewise fertilized, as 

 from without, so from within, by more recondite and central causes and 

 agitations, which if in excess, may be allayed with some feminine or other 

 mixture; since oftentimes qualities too intense rather poison dry and cho- 

 leric grounds, than conduce to their advantage, as we shall come to shew; 

 and that which makes a cold and moist ground fertile, will destroy the 

 contrary, as we see in the too free applications of salt ; and therefore, it 

 requires no ordinary dexterity to be able to direct where and what reme- 

 dies are to be administered, since we find it the same in vegetable produc- 

 tions as in the animal, where complexions should be suited ; for want of 

 which care, through avarice and other sordid circumstances, noble fami- 

 lies themselves are many times rendered childless, which might else 

 have multiplied and been perpetuated. To illustrate this by our present 

 subject ; we find, that a thin sifting or sprinkling of ashes, has enriched 

 all the higher pastures, when, where strewed too thick, the ground be- 

 came totally barren. Sometimes, again, defect of sufficient depth may be 

 cause of sterility ; and so it frequently happens, that the proper remedy 

 of some hungry and shallow surface, is to superinduce and lay more earth 

 upon it, and to find out the medium, by the diligent trials of some de- 

 grees of depths in the same soil : but solitary, single, or over-hasty 

 experiments, before the earth be prepared by some of our fore-men- 

 tioned essays, may prove discouraging and insufficient, as my lord 

 Bacon has oft advertised us. 



1 From accurate experiments made by Dr. Stephen Hales and others, it is certain that 

 the leaves of plants draw from the air a considerable portion of aqueous fluid, in which a 

 large share of nutriment is minutely dissolved. This nutriment is certainly produced by 

 putrid steams, generated upon the surface of the earth, which, flying upwards, become 

 blended and incorporated with the atmosphere. Showers of rain bring down these par- 

 ticles again to the earth, and probably they are delivered to the mouths of the vegetable 

 creation in a more elaborated state, in consequence of their solution in the atmospheric 

 vapours. 



