434 Indications of the Fcrtilit;/ or Barrenness of Soils. 
loam itself; of little use as arable or pasture land. Its very look 
is poor, although the timber grows well close by on the same 
soil. 
In passing from this poor corner we come to the pasture just 
named above. A worse piece of land I hardly ever saw. It joins 
a brook which overflows it at times after heavy rains, and to 
appearance does some good — at all events, where the water goes 
the grass looks green in the winter and spring, but when hay- 
making comes there is little or no more grass than where the 
water does not go, neither is the hay of better quality. On the 
parts of this field where the water docs not go, we put some farm- 
yard manure, also some ashes steeped in soap-suds and chamber- 
ley, and fed a flock of sheep on a portion of it, in the hope of 
improving the herbage ; but could never see the least good either 
of the three manures did. The sheep-dung lay so thick that it 
might have been shovelled up ; still the land had that russet, un- 
kind, thick strong turf, which no animal would eat unless starved 
to it. Dig up a portion of this soil, and it looked good ; plenty 
of substance to it, and not, to appearance, too much clay — a soil 
that would deceive most farmers. Perhaps the chemist might be 
the best judge here, the field being all alike, and the sub and 
super soils being apparently the same. 
Immediately above this barren pasture is an arable field of 
strong clay (still adjoining the same brook), but not a very wet 
clay. It would grow beans and wheat. The top-soil here is in- 
clined to be a little dark, but treads hollow after a frost. The 
subsoil is a yellow clay. 
The remainder of the farm is pasture, mostly clay or a clay 
and loam mixed, with a clay subsoil, and of much the best quality 
on the higher parts of it. The elm grows well on the loamy and 
drier veins ; where the clay predominates, the oak thrives better ; 
but the turf shows indications of sourness, with a great deal of 
carnation-grass, and but little or no clover of either sort mixed 
with it. On the lower parts of the pasture the herbage is still 
worse. A great portion of it is what we call fire-leaves, and much 
carnation grass, and a few bents. The top-soil here is a little 
coloured with decayed vegetable matter, but evidently clay, with a 
clay subsoil. 
i now come to the farm I at present reside on, which is 
on the blue lias formation, and lies within 5 miles of the city 
of Gloucester, and in one of the worst districts of land in 
Gloucestershire. I have known land produce as little grass and 
hay as tliis pasture does, and as little straw as the arable, but 
never so little butter and choose from that grass and hay, or so 
little corn from that straw. The w heat varies from 8 to 20 bushels 
per acre; beans from 16 to 24 bushels per acre; and the make 
