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just one-half that we do) ; — 4. A saving of nearly 30s. per acre 
now expended on foreign manures ; — 5. Greater weight of 
all kinds of crops. In fact, in England we wilfully neglect 
to adopt one of the most rational and practical means that 
can be devised for the purpose of increasing the quantity of 
our available manure, while at the same time we are import- 
ing manures from the Continent at a sacrifice of capital 
amounting to £500,000 annually; and even notwithstanding 
this, not one-fourth of our cultivated lands receive a due 
sufficiency ! 
I am extremely obliged by the favourable terms in which 
the Learned Professor Johnston has been pleased to speak of 
the report; and am as sorry that he should have thought that 
I had misrepresented his opinions. It has arisen from the 
fact, that in reading the report great portions have been 
necessarily omitted, and that I only read the first part 
of the Professor's views, and omitted the second, but from 
which report, when printed, it will be found that I have 
not given those opinions partially. When speaking of alu- 
mina in soils, I certainly meant, and hope I was so under- 
stood, that it was respecting the texture or earthy ingredients 
alone, and not of manures existing or applied to them. 
Nothing is clearer than that particular plants are adapted 
to particular soils : even in grasses, the cotton grass, and 
some of the bent grasses, together with different species of 
rushes, sedges, &c. inhabit wet soils ; others, as the fescues, 
and the broom grasses, require a dry sandy soil. Alter the 
conditions under which each of these varieties of plants 
flourishes ; make the wet soil dry by an addition of sand, or 
the dry soil retentive by the addition of alumina, and both of 
them will languish and ultimately disappear. Those grasses 
which are found in the superior grazing pastures require a 
soil neither too wet nor too dry : evidence has been produced 
to show that the condition of the soil favourable to the growth 
