BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. d07 
a long while. Sometimes salt is seen to effloresce upon the land.” 
And yet again he dwells on the fact that land freshly embanked 
from the sea can often be cultivated immediately with success ; so 
that the question would still seem to be open and well worthy of 
consideration, viz. whether some part of the moisture observed in 
such soils may not be due to changes of texture brought about by 
the presence of carbonate of soda at a secondary stage when, as 
Reinders himself has shown, this compound has had time to form 
within the soil. In experiments where perforated boxes of loam 
were overflowed with sea-water and then sunk in a garden to the 
level of the surrounding soil, it appeared that tne amount of chlo- 
rine fell in the course of two years from 0.21% to 0.008%, and that 
during the second year the texture of the earth became loose, even 
beneath the surface, in marked contrast to its previous condition ; 
that is to say, the loam finally returned to its normal state. 
Of course some portion of the puddling-effect produced by sea- 
water would be brought about by any water, even the freshest, in 
so far as there was any stirring action in connection with the flow- 
age, and in so far as plastic particles of mud were silted into or 
upon the soil. But it is evident enough that sea-water has of itself 
a very considerable and peculiar influence upon the tilth of soils, 
as Van Bemmelen and other Hollanders have insisted, though it is 
none the less plain that the changes of mechanical condition pro- 
duced by sea-water of itself are distinctly different from those pro- 
duced by the alkalies. A good part of the binding effects noticed 
by Reinders are probably nothing more than particular instances 
of a general fact that has long been known, viz. that common salt 
— as well as lime and its compounds and various other soluble sa- 
line or mineral matters — have power to cause finely divided moist 
particles of matter to cohere into larger masses. ‘This fact is fa- 
miliarly shown by stirring a solution of salt into muddy water, — 
as, for example, turbid clay-water taken from a mud-puddle, which 
may quickly be ‘‘ settled” in this way. Stupendous examples of 
this phenomenon occur in Nature, where muddy rivers flowing into 
the sea soon become clear because the suspended matter is precip- 
itated by the action of the salt. But this coalescence or granula- 
tion produced by salt is a very different thing from the increased 
stickiness or plasticity that is brought about by mixing small quan- 
tities of either of the soluble alkalies with clay or other fictile earth. 
Indeed the action of salt may be regarded as antagonistic to plas- 
ticity, and there are cases on record taken from agricultural prac- 
