62 



A DISCOURSE 



Wood-ashes, rich and impregnate with salts, are fit for wet ground 

 without mixture, and in pasture excellent, not sifted on over thick. In 

 the AVest Indies, near Guatimala, Gage tells us their manure is the burn- 

 ing of trees to ashes p. These kill the worm ; but in earth which is 

 subject to over-heat and chap much, ashes and burning composts do but 

 increase the fever, and, therefore, contrary remedies are to be sought, such 

 as the dung of oxen and swine ; but not so when lands are naturally or ac- 

 cidentally cold. Wherefore we should endeavour by all means to detect, as 

 far as we are able, the quality predominant both of the earth we would 

 improve, and the composts we apply, and not throw them promiscuously 

 upon every thing, without considering of what temper and constitution 

 they be ; for grounds are as nice as our bodies, and as obnoxious to in- 

 firmities upon every defect and excess ; and therefore it requires skill, and 

 no little study, to be able rightly to marshal this materia medica (as I may 

 call it) of composts, the virtue of which does sometimes lie very hidden ; 

 at least, if it be true which Sir Hugh Piatt affirms, that what we all this 

 while seek after, is indeed altogether invisible to human eyes, and to be 

 discerned only by the eyes intellectual, because it is veiled and clad under 

 so many different bodies, whereof some are more ponderous, such as 

 marl, chalk, the dung of beasts, &c. ; and some more light, as their flesh, 

 bones, hair, &c. ; and some yet lighter;, as grain and generous seeds : for 

 in such as have virtue to multiply their own species, that spirit is invested 

 with a very thin and curious integument, as in effect we have instanced 

 in the blood and flesh of animals, so much more powerful for the enriching 

 of land than their dung and excrements — this industrious man computing 

 it to no less than twenty times ; and to the same advance above this, hair, 

 wool, and calcined bones As to the coarser soils, he says, that the 



P In Sweden, Finland, Livonia, and the greatest part of Russia, where woods are plen- 

 tiful, the countrymen cut down large tracts, and after burning the wood, they sow the land 

 with corn, which husbandry they continue for three years, the wood-ashes remaining in 

 force for that time. On the fourth year, they remove to another woody quarter, and in this 

 manner they proceed till the first sown land be again covered with wood, which is generally 

 in about twenty year=. Tin's operation is called in the north, Smedieland. See Osbeck's 

 Voyage to China, p. 50. Vol. I. 



1 Bones should by no means be calcined, as their virtue is dissipated by the fire, and 

 nothing but a cajml jnortuiim left behind. My worthy friend. Gen. St. Leger, has favoured 

 me with the following account of bones used for manure. The subject is curious as well as 

 important : 



Eight years ago I laid down to grass a large piece of very indifferent limestone land 



