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MISCELLANEOUS COMMUNICATIONS AND 
NOTICES. 
1. — Burning of Clay Land. By C. Randell. 
To H. S. Thompson, Esq., M.P. 
Chadbury near Eresham, 
Dear biR, May 2Gth, 1863. 
You ask me for any Information I may have to give on the 
subject of burning clay and the mode of effecting that operation, 
in continuation of a letter which was inserted in our Society's 
Journal some years since, and you inquire especially as to my 
experience of the results hitherto obtained. 
The duration of the beneficial effect of land-burning, that is, 
of burning the surface of clay soils, is very remarkable. I can 
point to several fields which were burned twenty years since, 
in which the improvement thereby effected still continues ; and 
more particularly to one remarkable instance, where, in a field of 
29 acres of very poor land, 12 acres were well burned, the 
remaining 17 acres, owing to less favourable weather, not so 
well. It is a steep hill-side, and for that reason has never bad a 
cart-load of farmyard manure in the memory of man. Wheat 
has been grown every alternate year since the burning, the 
average produce of the whole field being not less than 4J quarters 
per acre. The intermediate crops have been either vetches or 
seeds fed off by sheep, the condition of the land being main- 
tained by oilcake given to the sheep while consuming those crops, 
and by guano applied to the wheat at the time of sowing. ,The 
whole field has been treated alike since the burning ; but every 
crop has testified to the more efficient way in which that opera- 
tion was effected upon the 12 acres. This field shows both the 
permanence of the effect of this process, and the comparative 
advantages dependent on more or less skilful management. 
Twenty-two years' experience of the effects of burning clay-land 
have confirmed my first impression of the benefit to be derived 
from it ; and I may say with confidence, that, on such soils, apart 
from draining, I know of nothing by which so much good can 
be effected ; and there is nothing which I would so strongly 
recommend a new tenant to adopt on entering upon a farm of 
this description, more especially if, as is often the case, he finds 
