40 



ON PARING AND BURNING GRANITE SOILS. 



what Mr. Prideaux elsewhere states, when he says, " greenstone ap- 

 pears to form the fertile hill of Rock and Estover estates, well 

 wooded." Again, the " killas is highly fertile, differing singularly 

 from the adjoining granite. In no place is this more remarkable than 

 at Buckland, on the Dart ; where the killas runs in a trough between 

 two granite mountains. The vivid green of the turf and the rich wood 

 running up into the acclivities, contrast strikingly with the pale herbage 

 and bald crowns of its overtopping neighbours. It appears amidst the 

 slate in Holne parish, and the different value of the land marks its 

 superior fertility. At Yolland estate, at the foot of Shipley-tor, some 

 fine trees appeared in the midst cf the granite; on approaching them, 

 they were fount! to be growing on a patch of this killas, not a tree 

 spreading out on either side." * 



On passing through the Black Forest in Germany, last Autumn, I 

 was particularly struck with the effect of paring and burning the soil 

 in somewhat similar circumstances of barrenness ; for though the soil 

 was not granitic in any of the spots which I examined, it was equally 

 deficient in carbonic matter, the underlying rock being a silicious or 

 argillaceous slate. The steep and almost perpendicular declivities were 

 in their apparently natural state, covered with stunted brushwood, chiefly 

 birch and hazel, starved Scotch firs, and tufts of the coarser grasses ; 

 and no English farmer, I think, would have dreamed of trying to rear 

 a crop of corn on such a place, The industrious foresters, however, 

 undeterred by what might appear, under the most favourable circum- 

 stances, an indifferent prospect, — carefully grub up the brushwood, 

 pare off the scanty sward of grass, and, piling them up in small heaps, 

 burn the whole to ashes. These are scattered over the pared surface, 

 and dug, or rather scratched in, with a sort of pronged hoe, or a narrow 

 spade. In some instances a slight dressing of dung is added, though 

 this is not universal ; but after all these operations, the soil seems to 

 be little more than a mass of half-broken and half-powdered slates. I 

 was therefore not a little surprised to observe crops of oats growing 

 there — not very good certainly, but tolerable enough to repay the 

 farmer's trouble. 



I am therefore, I think, fairly entitled to infer, that if our granitic 

 and other soils deficient in carbon were thus treated, their fertility 

 would be thereby improved. 



Zee, Kent, Dec. 10th. 



* Observations like these of Mr. Prideaux' are highly important, and we request our 

 correspondents to transmit us similar facts respecting soils. 



