140 
ing to the touch, and admit of being ploughed 
into tolerably coherent furrow-slices; but when 
dry, feel soft to the tread, and are dissipative to 
the touch, and yield beneath a very small weight, 
and are liable to be blown away with the wind. 
All sand lands acquire a high temperature in 
summer, and are exceedingly irretentive of 
_ moisture; and many naturally abound in bents, 
heaths, quick grass, sorrel, broom, and furze. 
The best means of improving them are copious 
intermixtures of marly or argillaceous earth ; and 
the crops most suitable for them are carrots, 
parsnips, turnips, rye, and oats. See the articles 
Manure and Soit. 
Sand, of a silicious kind, particularly such as 
is washed from hills and roads and found in the 
bed of rivulets, is an excellent application for 
rendering clay soils loose and friable; and, when 
used as litter in cattle sheds, or as a carpeting 
for fold-yards, or in any other capacity which 
| causes it to be saturated with liquid or semi-liquid 
excrements, forms a very good manure for most 
kinds of cold stiff land. But, as a mere textural 
improver, it requires to be as thoroughly as pos- 
sible incorporated with the soil, and always does 
best when either itself or the clay to which it is 
applied contains some proportion of calcareous 
earth; and as a litter for cattle-sheds and fold- 
| yards, it is often inconvenient.on account of its 
weight, and always does best when it contains 
so large a proportion of clay or of vegetable re- 
mains as to be far more truly a loam or a mould 
| than a sand. 
Shell sand, or calcareous sand, abounds in 
many parts of the eastern, southern, and south- 
western shores of England, of the southern and 
south-western shores of Ireland, and of the 
western shores or western islands of* Scotland. 
It differs much in colour, and in quality, and in 
the circumstances under which it is found or 
can be obtained by farmers. Some kinds of it 
_ are a finely comminuted dust, scarcely distin- 
| guishable in appearance from the most powdery 
| sorts of drift-sand or of sandy soil,—and other 
| kinds are more or less granular, or even contain 
intermixtures of bits of shells and small boulders. 
Some are in a very large degree or even mainly 
calcareous; and others contain great proportions 
of silicious and argillaceous and other earths. 
Some appear to derive their calcareous matter 
entirely from the fracture and crumbling of shells 
of the present epoch; and others seem to derive 
| more or less of it from calcareous marine deposits, 
or calcareous marine formations, either mollus- 
cous or coralline, of comparatively remote geolo- 
gical periods. Some lie loose and dry and per- 
fectly accessible along the beach; and others lie 
always within low-water mark, or even under 
considerable depths of the sea, and can be pro- 
cured only by dredging. 
Calcareous sand, in almost all its varieties, is a 
valuable manure for clay soils, heavy loams, and 
spongy and mossy lands, and an excellent top- 
SAND. 
dressing for rough sour pastures and meadows. 
It also does well to be mixed in composts for 
lighter soils; and may, in some cases, be very 
advantageously used for littering cattle, or strew- 
ing folds and sheds. ‘An economical use of 
shelly sands, separately or in composts, may be 
recommended in laying the manure on leys one 
year before ploughing, that it may have time to 
raise a grassy sward, and get fixed and incor- 
porated with the surface among the roots and 
fibres. An application to wheat fallows has been 
recommended; in that case, it should be applied 
late in the season of working the land, and be 
lightly covered.” 
A valuable calcareous sand is extensively em- 
ployed in Brittany under the name of marl, and 
consists principally of the remains of shells, mad- 
repores, and corallines, but also contains a small 
proportion of highly azotised organic matter, 
and of course is, on that account, all the more 
mightily fertilizing. It occurs in great abun- 
dance at the mouths of the river of Morlaix; and 
is there the subject of a considerable traffic; and 
is obtained by dredging from barges, between 
the middle of May and the middle of October; 
and is said to be reproduced from time to time 
in a constant series of new banks. It is applied 
to light dry soils in doses of from 5 to 6 tons per 
acre, and to clayey lands in doses of 11 or 12 
tons ; and it requires to be used as soon as pos- 
sible after it is taken from the sea,—for, when 
long exposed to the air, it suffers disaggregation, 
and loses a portion of its good qualities. 
Shell sand, of very similar constitution to 
that of Brittany, abounds in some parts of the 
sea-margin of Cornwall and Devonshire, and has 
for many ages been appreciated by the farmers 
of the adjacent sea-boards. A vast and seem- 
ingly inexhaustible supply of it occurs in the 
estuary of Padstow; and was formerly carried 
some miles into the interior on horses’ backs and 
in carts; and is now transported to greater dis- 
tances and in ampler profusion by railway. This 
rich deposit was declared free from toll for the 
use of farmers, by a public document of the 13th 
century ; and again was pronounced by a statute 
of the seventh year of James I., “to be very pro- 
fitable for the bettering of land, and especially 
for the increase of corn and tillage within the 
counties of Cornwall and Devon.” ‘The sand is 
dug out of the shallows of the estuary, and carted 
thence to the shore, and heaped up there in large 
depots for transportation into the country; and 
from one point, at Wadebridge, it is carried into 
the very heart of Cornwall, and distributed off 
in two branch directions, by a railway which 
was planned and executed mainly or almost 
solely for the purpose; and it has, in conse- 
‘quence, become diffused far and wide as an 
ordinary manure over the county, and has pro- 
duced the most extraordinary effect on the fer- 
tility of its surface. Mr. Herapath has furnished 
| the following account of the sea-sand, felspar, 
