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On the Improvement of Cold and Heavy Soils. 
With regard to the latter mode, I should observe that success 
will depend entirely upon how the ashes are burned. If dug, and 
thrown with the spade upon the fires in large pieces, a double 
quantity of coal will be consumed, and the ashes of no more value 
than so much brick-ends. The proper mode is to move the soil 
with a pickaxe, breaking it all the time as much as possible ; it 
is then put lightly upon the fires with a shovel. I would, how- 
ever, advise no one to commence operations in this way without 
first seeing how it is done by men who have had some experience ; 
no description would be sufficiently intelligible to enable any one, 
a stranger to it, to practise it with success. 
That the mechanical effect of ashes in rendering heavy land 
friable has a great deal to do with increasing its powers of pro- 
duction, there can be no doubt ; but it is unfortunately as certain 
that their effect in this way is not so great in subsequent years as 
in the first two or three, though it will always be considerable. 
This is accounted for by the natural tendency of ashes, like lime, 
to sink into the soil. They, therefore, in a few years become in- 
corporated with a larger proportion of earth than at first, and 
their effect in rendering it more easily workable gradually dimi- 
nishes ; but that their virtues are not to be attributed to their me- 
chanical effect alone, as I have heard it contended, I have proved 
by wheeling ashes upon the surface of part of a crop of vetches, 
when the part so dressed showed, in the succeeding spring, a 
superiority which was distinguishable as far as the field could be 
seen, and when the crop was cut (green) while the whole was 
heavy, that part to which the ashes were applied was completely 
rotten in the bottom. 
For those who, like myself, have to undertake the task of 
getting a considerable tract of foul and poor clay-land into a 
tolerable state of cultivation, there are, to my knowledge, no 
means by which it can be accomplished in so short a time, and 
with so great a certainty, as by burning : let it be accompanied in 
all cases by draining ; let the first crop be a green one, consumed 
upon the land ; and the land will be at once established, and may 
ever after, at the least possible expense, be maintained in a pro- 
ductive state, provided it be kept clean and cropped in a fair and 
reasonable manner. 
It will at all times give me pleasure to answer any inquiries 
you or any of your friends may make connected with this subject ; 
or to show you or them, during the summer months, the effect 
upon the growing crops of the treatment I have endeavoured to 
describe. 
Ever, my dear Sir, very truly yours, 
C. Randell. 
Chadbury, Dec. I9lh, 1843. 
