A DISCOURSE

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absolute an ingredient in all our dungs and composts. I cannot in themean time but wonder how a thing so eminently sacred and fertile, shouldcome to be the symbol of malediction ; when, as the custom was, theyused to sow salt in the place of Cities they had erased and cursed ; therebeing in all nature nothing so pregnant and fruitful, unlefs it were to in-vite the plough to go there, and that the fertility of the spot for corn andgrain might divert them from rebuilding and covering it again withhouses. Indeed, to apply salt in excefs, burns the Earth for a time*,so as nothing will grow upon it; but, when once the rains have welldiluted it, vegetables spring up more wantonly than ever. This I dailyfind by sifting common salt upon the gravel walks of my garden, andfor which cause I have left it off; and we find that the Earth itselfover-marled, and too highly manured, is as unprofitable as if it werebarren for the time, and that there is in all things a juft proportion to beobserved.

. Buf neither all this while do I pretend, much lefs determine, that theprinciple I so much celebrate, is our common artificial salt, composed ofurine, and the like, which of itself is so burning and destructive till itsacidity be-qualified by the air and showers from heaven, (which endowsif with a natural magnetism to receive their irradiant virtues,) but a certainmore unctuous spirit, or airy nitre, pregnant with a. vital balm, which isthe thing we endeavour to find in the materials of composts; but whetherit be accidental or efsential,.coporeal or more spiritual, principal or or-ganical, or (to speak with the Chymists and later Atomists ) whether com-municated by effluvia, salts embryonate, or undigested and not specificate,from ferments, spermatic vapours, influences celestial, or from liquor onlyimpregnated and concocted, I leave to those who affect to wrap up easynotions in hard and uncertain terms, whilst the things would be of use tothe philosophical husbandman, were they reduced into just clafses, forthe better discriminating of the several composts; as which of them mostabound in nitrous or urinous parts; or which partake of the nature ofour crude common salts, and Kali’s mineral, or other. This would en-able us to pronounce, where, and how we may apply them with safety andsuccefs : for some we know are plainly exitial and deadly to plants, (suchas the mineral,) others properate too fast, and some are sluggish and scarce