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Take rain water of the equinox, a sufficient quantity. Boil with store ofdung of oxen till it be very strong, then difsolve one pound of saltpetrein every pottle of the Water; in this, a little tepid, macerate your seedsfor twenty-four hours; dry them gently, rather’with a cloth than by thefire, and sow in the most barren earth, or water fruit-trees with the liquor,for prodigious effects. Or thus:
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Take two quarts of the same water, dung of oxen as before; boil to theconsumption of half; strain and cast into the percolation two handfuls ofbay salt, and as much saltpetre. Another:
Take rain-water which has stood till putrified; add to it oxen, pigeon,. ■or sheep-dung; expose it for insolation a week or ten days, then pafs itthrough a coarser strainer; infuse more of the same soil, and let it standin the sun a week longer; strain it a second time, and add to it commonsalt and a little ox-gall. Another:
Take quick lime, umi .Keep-dung at discretion } put these into rain-water, four fingers eminent; to ten pints of this liquor, add one of aqua-vitae ; macerate your seeds, or water with it any lean earth, where youwould plant for wonderful effects. Another :
Infuse three pounds of the best Indian nitre in fifteen gallons of water;with this irrigate your barren mould. It was succefsfully tried amongsttulips and bulbs, where the earth should by no means (as we have said)be forced by composts. But a gentler than either, is,
A dilution of milk with rain-water, sprinkled upon unslacked lime,,first sifted on your beds; and so after every -watering the lime repeated.
These, with divers more which Tmight superadd, not taken and tran-scribed out of common receipt-books, and such as pretend to secrets, butmost of them experimented, I thought fit to mention, that upon repeti-tion of trials the curious might satisfy themselves, and as they have op-portunity improve them; whilst, perhaps as to irrigations, lefs exalted li-quors were more natural. And what if efsays w T ere made of liquors perlixivium, the plant reduced to ashes: might it not be more connatural,since we find by more frequent 'trial, that the burning of stubble, before