242 Dormant and Active Ingredients of the Soil. 
ing from the use of bones in the exhausted pastures of Cheshire 
and other similar localities ; of the second, in the system so general 
in the early stages of agriculture, that of allowing land to remain 
at rest for a certain period with a view of restoring to it its ex- 
hausted powers, — a method which would be absurd, if the alkalies, 
phosphates, and other of the more scanty ingredients were abso- 
lutely wanting, but which would be likely to prove efficient, if 
they were only locked up within the recesses of the soil, and re- 
quired time to call them into activity ; of the third, in the prac- 
tice resorted to by Jethro TuU, who boasted that he could realize 
an abundant crop year after year without manure, provided the 
ground were sufficiently stirred and broken up, — a statement 
which seems confirmed, by some of the results of spade hus- 
bandry, and in a certain degree by those detailed in this paper, 
with respect to the permanent crops which are herein mentioned 
as having been made the subjects of experiment. 
The choice between the above three methods will of course be 
determined in each instance by a balance of economy ; and although 
in general this latter consideration will incline the farmer to pre- 
fer the ordinary method of manuring, either to the sacrifice of a 
year's produce, as in the second method, or to the expenditure of 
labour required to put into practice the third, still there may be 
cases where it might better answer his purpose to resort to one or 
other of them, as being more advantageous in itself, or else more 
suitable to the circumstances of his case. 
At any rate it may be important for him to be assured, that at 
the very time he is ransacking the most distant quarters of the 
globe for certain of the mineral ingredients required for his crops, 
he has lying beneath his feet in many instances an almost inex- 
haustible supply of the same. 
For there seems no reason to doubt, that the whole mass of 
rock, which constitutes the subsoil in the secondary and tertiary 
districts of this country, is nearly as rich in phosphates and in 
alkalies as the vegetable mould derived from its decomposition; 
and although the soil, in which the experiments in my garden 
were conducted, possessed a depth perhaps three times as great 
as tho average of those in which farm produce is generally raised, 
yet, on the other hand, the amount of phosphates and of alkaline 
ingredients reported to be present in the latter appears in many 
instances greater than that determined in the case before us. 
Thus Dr. Ure* gives an analysis of a soil in the parish of 
Hornchurch, Essex, which contained four grains of phosphate of 
lime in 1000 grains ; whereas, of ours, the same quantity yielded 
little more than one-fourth of a grain; and if the former be re- 
* Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, 
