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most abounding in salt; chalk more heating, and therefore proper forclay, cold, and spewing grounds, being suffered to lie a competent timeto resolve before you turn it in; earth on earth, that is (I suppose hemeans) the under part upon the upper, or the second spit on the first, aswe have directed at the breaking up of fresh ground with the spade.
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Another mixture he commends (and on which we have likewise newlytouched) of substances, which are not mere earth, as soot, ashes, not tirehard and dry cinders of sea-coal, (which we are too busy with in placeswhere the ground is naturally too hot and dry) but such as is apt to re-lent ; and even the sprinkling of salt, where it is wisely sown.
A third is the permitting vegetables, abounding in fixed salts, to dieinto the ground, as pease-haulm, bracks, and all sorts of stubble cast onabout the beginning of winter: So leaves of trees mingled with chalk, andproper composts of dungs, to heat and preserve the ground from souringwith them when they are used .alone y ..
A'fourth is (on which we have also touched) heat and comfort, procuredby calcinations, the burning, of ling, heath, sedge ; covering the groundwith bushes for a time; inclosures of walls and mounds, when the landlies in the eye of the weather; and in other,cases, meridian exposures,and the warmth of the woolly fleeces of sheep as well as manure, foldedor pastured: And to this we may add the very grazing of cattle, whichin some cases has succeeded better than the best dungy compost, especiallyfor old and decayed orchards, which have been observed to recover to ad-miration, when mowing has been pernicious ; for even the biting of cattlegives a gentle loosening to the roots of the herbage, and makes it togrow fine and sweet, and their very breath and treading, as well as soil*and the comfort of their warm bodies, is wholesome, and marvellouslycherishing: But this is to be understood of places where the trees are offull growth, and where the beast cannot reach to crop 2 .
y The leaves of some trees sooner become mould than others. The leaves of Oak, BirchSpanish Chesnut, and Oriental Plane, are with great difficulty converted into vegetable 1earth, even when put, into the fold-yard, and trodden with cattle.
z Nice farmers consider the lying of a beast upon the ground, for one night only, as a-sufficient tilth for the year. The breath of gramenivorous animals does certainly enrich the*roots of grafs; a circumstance worthy of the attention of the philosophical farmer.