92 
Light-Land Farming. 
soils tliero are several others situated in the millstone grit of 
Yorkshire, and also on the magnesian limestone of the north of 
England. The former is generally poor and high-lyitj<r, and 
not of much value for arable cultivation, but the latter contains 
some good grass and turnip land. 
The composition of the light soil on the Hastings sand is 
principally fine silicious matter, oxide of iron, small portions of 
clay, little or no lime, and very minute quantities of phosphorus, 
sulphur, and alkaline salts. Its agricultural character is a soft 
easy brown or yellowish soil, mostly dry, but occasionally wet 
where the rain-water is arrested in its descent by clay beds, 
from which it is thrown out to the surface, and injures it when 
not kept from spreading by draining. Its physical aspect is 
undulating, and in some parts steep and hilly. From the want 
of lime in the soil an application of this substance in some shape 
or other is highly beneficial. • 
The light soils of the plastic clay and neighbouring formations 
occupy a much larger area than the Hastings sand. Tlie poorer 
portions are composed of barren sand or flinty gravel, as in Dor- 
setshire, and the better constitute the sandy loams of Norfolk and 
Suffolk. The latter are sometimes wet and require to be drained, 
and are capable of attaining great fertility by chalking or marl- 
ing and sheep husbandry. The light land of the sandstone 
formations is cither a mixture of gravel, sand, clay, marl, 
peroxide of iron, vegetable matter, and the ordinary ingredients 
of soils in smaller or greater proportions, or the gravel is absent, 
and then the soil appears as a rich, red, friable, sandy loam. 
These soils are very superior in natural fertility to any yet men- 
tioned, and when drained, limed, and freed from couch-grass arc 
easily kept clean and very productive of all kinds of corn and 
roots. 
The light soils, which prevail most in Scotland, are of a totally 
different geological and chemical nature from those of England, 
being mostly found in the older formations of the gvanite, gneiss, 
trap, &c. There is no clialk similar to that of England, and 
where tliere is any it consists of small beds lying under or in 
the vicinity of peat bogs ; neither are there any oolite soils if we 
except small and detached portions of the inferior oolite in 
Sutherland and Morayshire, and which do not, properly speak- 
ing, belong to a classification restricted altogether to soils of a 
light description. 
The light land on the granite formation of Scotland is thin 
and poor, and its value is still further deteriorated by its position, 
which is high-lying, not easily accessible, and situated jn a cold 
bleak climate. The upper or higher lying soils are of no agri- 
cultural value so far as the production of corn and roots is con- 
