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OF EARTH. 39 



most abounding in salt ; chalk more heating, and, therefore, proper for 

 clay, cold, and spewing grounds, being suffered to lie a competent time 

 to resolve before you turn it in ; earth on earth, that is, (I suppose he 

 means,) the under part upon the upper, or the second spit on the fhst, as 

 we have directed at the breaking up of fresh ground with the spade. 



Another mixture he commends (and on which we have likewise newly 

 touched) of substances, which are not mere earth, as soot, ashes, not the 

 hard and dry cinders of sea-coal, (which we are too busy with in places 

 where the ground is naturally too hot and dry,) but such as is apt to re- 

 lent ; and even the sprinkling of salt, where it is wisely sown. 



A third is the permitting vegetables, abounding in fixed salts, to die 

 into the ground, as peas'-liaulm, bracks, and all sorts of stubble, cast on 

 about the beginning of winter : so leaves of trees mingled with chalk, 

 and proper composts of dungs, to heat and preserve the ground from 

 souring with them when they are used alone y. 



A fourth is (on which we have also touched) heat and comfort, procured 

 by calcinations, the burning of ling, heath, sedge ; covering the ground 

 with bushes for a time ; inclosures of walls and mounds, when the land 

 lies in the eye of the weather ; and in other cases, meridian exposures, 

 and the warmth of the woolly fleeces of sheep as well as manure, folded 

 or pastured : and to this we may add the very grazing of cattle, which, 

 in some cases, has succeeded better than the best dungy compost, especially 

 for old and decayed orchards, which have been observed to recover to ad- 

 miration, when mowing has been pernicious; for even the biting of cattle 

 gives a gentle loosening to tlie roots of the herbage, and makes it to 

 grow fine and sweet ; and their very breath and treading, as well as soil, 

 and the comfort of their warm bodies, is wholesome, and marvellously 

 cherishing : but this is to be understood of places where the trees are of 

 full growth, and where the beast cannot reach to crop 



y The leaves of some trees sooner become mould than others. The leaves of Oak, Birch, 

 Spanish Chestnut, and . Oriental Plane, are with great difficulty converted into vegetable 

 earth, even when put into the fold-yard, and trodden with cattle. 



3 Nice farmers consider the lying of a beast upon the ground, for one night only, as a 

 sufficient tilth for the year. The breath of graminivorous animals does certainly enrich the 

 roots of grass ; a circumstance worthy of the attention of the philosophical farmer. 



