4 



Present State of the Science of 



is the immediate oLject of our Society's labours. But, althoug-h 

 it is impossible to follow tliis question of the permanent improve- 

 ment of soils into all its details, it may not be amiss to look 

 for a moment at its more 2;eneral features ; bearing in mind, that 

 we are not now seeking for positive conclusions on which we 

 would recommend that immediate outlay should be made on a 

 large scale by practical farmers, but are endeavouring, as is the 

 business of societies which desire to enlarge the bounds of actual 

 knowledge, to obtain such a bird's-eye view of the field of inquiry 

 as may show us what are the lines by which we may best hope 

 to effect our advance into a country we desire to explore. All 

 subsoils, then, as has been said, may be roughly divided into clays, 

 sands, and stones — or rather the clayey, sandy, and stony : in the 

 two former of which, the upper soil generally partakes of their 

 mechanical nature, that is to say, the soil resting on clay will pro- 

 bably be close, and on sand loose ; while in all the three it will 

 chemically partake more or less of the subsoil's nature, that is, its 

 substance will usually resemble, more or less, the bed on which it 

 rests, for the plain reason, that it has partly been formed by the 

 wearing and breaking up of that bed. Where sand predominates 

 in the soil and subsoil, thin veins of clay are not of unusual occur- 

 rence in the latter, and where these are found they may be turned 

 to great advantage ; but to all sandy ground the Flemings have 

 long applied a method of singular perseverance and proved success, 

 which is shortly as follows. They dig trenches of rather more 

 than a foot in width, and about a foot deep, over their field, at 

 such a distance from each other that the intervals or lands between 

 them are five times the width of the trench, from the bottom of 

 which, assuming the soil to be ten inches deep, they have therefore 

 dug up besides two inches of subsoil, and as they proceed they 

 fling the whole over each land on which the seed has been pre- 

 viously sown, which they thus cover. The trench, being shifted 

 sideways each year, and the same process renewed, at the end of 

 six years two inches of the whole subsoil will clearly have been 

 mixed with the upper surface, and the soil deepened by that 

 amount. The original trench is then dug perhaps two inches 

 lower, and at the end of another six years two more inches, at 

 least, of depth, will have been gained. In this way, after four or 

 five courses of trenching, that is to say, after twenty- four or thirty 

 years, the soil is brouglit to a depth of 18 or 20 inches of uniform 

 quality.* Nor does the industrious Fleming fold his arms when 

 this labour of a life has been accomplished. The bed of mould 

 into which he has converted the natural ground is preserved by 



* See Flemish Husbandry, by the Rev. W. Rham, p. 71.— Library of 

 Useful Knowledge. 



