238 
[Assembly 
do so, and communicate to the public the results; by which they will 
confer a great benefit on community. 
The use of plaster, and the clover crop, has restored to the farmer 
acres of land which had lain waste and useless. A modification of this 
mode of husbandry, by the use of clay, or the marly clays especially, 
would undoubtedly produce effects more 4)ermanent, than the plaster 
alone; for the produce of such soils must diminish as the vegetable mat- 
ter furnished by roots of clover is exhausted. But the retentive power 
of the soils will be doubly increased by clay, and render them capable 
of holding the manures applied to them, a much longer period; in other 
words, the water, which percolates through the sands, readily, and with- 
out obstmction in their natural state, and which will carry the soluble 
part of the manure along with it, will be held by it, or retained, when 
the sands are compacted by the use of clay. The function, therefore, 
which clay performs in a soil is partly mechanical, a function of the 
highest importance, as we may know by examining those wastes which 
are entirely destitute of alumine, known under the name of deserts. 
In concluding my account of the tertiary of Champlain, I beg leave 
to remark, 
1st. That it is probably the most recent marine formation yet known 
in this country, still it must be considered too ancient to be ranked 
among the modern deposits. The evidence of its newness rests, as has 
been stated alrcad} , on the remains of moluscous animals, the genera of 
which, and probably the species, still exist in the ocean. Therefore, the 
changes in climate, and other modifying conditions, cannot have materi- 
ally altered since the clays and sands of the Champlain basin were de- 
posited. 
I have remarked that it is too ancient to be ranked among the modern 
deposits; in this statement or conjecture I am borne out in part by the 
fact, that above these clays, &c. we have the modern group composed 
of boulders, pebbles and sands. Of boulders, we find them mostly dis. 
tributed above this formation; and of the pebbles and sands there is a 
thick overlaying stratum, entirely distinct in its mineralogical characters, 
being composed of the debris of the surrounding mountains, and dis- 
tinguished from it by containing iron sand, schorl, garnet silicious and 
lowed was the heaviest raised in ihis country that year. In tlie fall of the same year the lot 
WAS again ploughed and seeded down with wheat, of which it produced an extraordinary crop 
This wheat crop brought the highest premium in this commonwealth. The land has been 
liberally manured, and has since yielded great crops of hay. In this case there has been evi- 
dently a great improvement of the soil, and similar treatment of light soils would doubtless be 
followed by similar effects. If we were a farmer we think we should try iu-^ Greenfield Gaz 
