Burning Land for Manure. 



55 



plough, Dutch plough, or shim, cross-cut and torn about with a 

 harrow or cultivator, and then drawn into heaps by a horse-rake. 

 In this manner, especially where the Dutch plough is used, an 

 extensive breadth of land can be thus cultivated at a cheap rate 

 and in a short period. Should, however, the weather be dry, 

 great care must be taken that the heaps do not form pit-holes, in 

 consequence of the fire penetrating deep into the soil. On these 

 soils the beneficial action of burning is also mechanical and 

 chemical — mechanical in an opposite view to burning clay, as on 

 moory soils the ashes tend to consolidate an otherwise too porous 

 soil ; and chemically by the same mode which attends the action 

 of fire on all soils, which has been sufficiently dilated upon 

 already. 



Clamp-burning is effected by erecting the clay-sods, &c., into 

 large heaps of from 30 to 400 loads, with small spaces, as flues, 

 left at intervals. Soils burned in this manner which contain only 

 a small amount of vegetable matter will frequently require the 

 aid of furze, underwood, small coal, or other inflammable matter, 

 to assist the operation. Unless fagots or furze can be obtained 

 cheaply, or coals are very dear, the latter will in general be found 

 least expensive. There exists on all the coal districts a great 

 amount of stiff clays and marls that could be burned advantage- 

 ously and cheaply by using some of the carbonaceous shales which 

 are now thrown aside, and form enormous heaps at the mouths of 

 coal-pits, that are not adapted to household or manufacturing 

 purposes, yet contain sufficient inflammable matter to burn clay : 

 the hint is worth attending to. In burning soils of every descrip- 

 tion this must be ever kept in mind, that, unless the farmer returns 

 an equivalent to the soil, in the form of manure, for the crops 

 taken from it after burning, clays or any other soil will speedily 

 return to their original infertility. Taking crops after burning, 

 without returning such equivalent, are merely drafts on the re- 

 sources of posterity, as soils, such as the Botanic Garden at Ox- 

 ford, would by such means be deprived of the whole of the 

 mineral constituents of plants contained therein in the course of 

 ten short rotations. It is the practice so injuriously resorted to 

 by farmers, of taking crops from burned land without restoring 

 an equivalent, that has brought the practice so unjustly into dis- 

 repute, as it may safely be averred that there is not a practice 

 in the course of husbandry so advantageous as an assistant to the 

 fallow season as that of burning land, on all descriptions of soils, 

 except poor sands, gravels, and rubbles. On downs it has been 

 found advantageous, and particularly so on chalk soils which have 

 been some years previously under sainfoin. This might be ex- 

 pected, as sainfoin sends its long roots many feet into the interstices 



