52 



A DISCOURSE 



absolute an ingredient in all our dungs and composts. I cannot, in the 

 mean time, but wonder how a thing so eminently sacred and fertile, should 

 come to be the symbol of malediction ; when, as the custom was, they 

 used to sow salt in the place of cities they had erased and cursed ; there 

 being in all nature nothing so pregnant and fruitful, unless it were to 

 invite the plough to go there, and that the fertility of the spot for com 

 and grain might divert them from rebuilding and covering it again with 

 houses. Indeed, to apply salts in excess, burns the earth for a time, 

 so as nothing will grow upon it ; but, when once the rains have well 

 diluted it, vegetables spring up more wantonly than ever. This I daily 

 find, by sifting common salt upon the gravel walks of my garden, and 

 for which cause I have left it off ; and we find that the earth itself 

 over-marled, and too highly manured, is as unprofitable as if it were 

 barren for the time, and that there is in all things a just proportion to 

 be observed. 



But neither all this while do I pretend, much less determine, that the 

 principle I so much celebrate, is our common artificial salt, composed of 

 urine, and the like, which of itself is so burning and destructive, tiU its 

 acidity be qualified by the air and showers from heaven, (which endows 

 it with a natural magnetism to receive theu' irradiant virtues,) but a certain 

 more unctuous spirit, or airy nitre, pregnant with a vital balm, which is 

 the thing we endeavour to find in the materials of composts ; but whether 

 it be accidental or essential, corporeal or more spiritual, principal or or- 

 ganical, or (to speak with the chymists and later atomists) whether com- 

 municated by effluvia, salts embryonate, or undigested and not specificate, 

 from ferments, spermatic vapours, influences celestial, or from liquor only 

 impregnated and concocted, I leave to those who affect to wrap up easy 

 notions in hard and uncertain terms, whilst the things would be of use to 

 the philosophical husbandman, were they reduced into just classes, for 

 the better discriminating of the several composts ; as which of them most 

 abound in nitrous or urinous parts ; or which partake of the nature of 

 oiir crude common salts, and Kali's mineral, or other. This would en- 

 able us to pronounce, where and how we may apply them with safety and 

 success : for some we know are plainly exitial and deadly to plants, (such 

 as the mineral,) others properate too fast, and some are sluggish, and scarce 



