The first watery lixiviation, employed to obtain the saline matter, may now be evaporated to dryness; if of a brown colour, it is chiefly vegetable extract; if of a whitish colour, it is principally saline, and probably consists of chloride of sodium (common salt), with the admixture of a little sulphate of lime (gypsum).

The above mode of analysis I have made as simple as possible, and it requires no other apparatus than a set of grain scales and weights, a little sulphuric and muriatic acids, and some prussiate of potash, the whole of which, sufficient for examining every soil upon a large estate, may be obtained for thirty shillings.

In the above are no processes requiring adroitness in the manipulation, extreme nicety in the operation, or the practised eye of science and experience to conduct. All is simple, requiring nothing but the employment of the ordinary carefulness, and the common sense, of the experimenter.

Neither

The portion of soil which it is proposed to analyse, should be taken at about three inches from the surface. should the surface soil only be examined, but the substratum also. For it often will occur that the subsoil is of a better staple than that which reposes on it; or is of a quality that is capable of correcting some deficiency in it. Thus a light silicious soil will often lie upon a stratum abounding in alumina, which, by digging or trenching, may be brought to the surface and mingled with it.

The foregoing plan of analysis, it must be observed, is not one so particular as a practised chemist would pursue; but it is one easy, and capable of affording all the facts usually required to be known by a cultivator: viz. the moistureretaining power of a soil; the quantity of soluble and decomposable matter it contains; and the proportions of its earthy

constituents.

It has been urged by some that a great deal of information may be compendiously obtained, by ascertaining the specific

gravity of a soil, but of this I could never feel conviction. That a peat soil, that is, one containing a great excess of vegetable matter, is much lighter in weight than such as contain more of earthy constituents, is certain; but such do not require their specific gravity to be taken to detect them. If a soil is but rather above or under the average specific gravity, I do not see how the knowledge of that can determine whether the excess of weight arises from silica or carbonate of lime; or the deficiency of weight, from vegetable matters, alumina, or other light constituent. The specific gravity of silica is 2.66; of carbonate of lime 27; of alumina only 2. The unproductiveness of a soil usually arises from the excess of some one of the usual constituents which are enumerated in the foregoing imaginary analysis, rather than from the admixture of any foreign substance prejudicial to vegetation. In a previous communication (Vol. III. p. 270.), I have given the constituents of a fertile soil in detail, and to what I have stated there I have little to add. I have also stated, in another place, that a soil too retentive of moisture is seldom met with, that cannot be rectified by the mechanical remedy of underdraining. If it is purposed to ameliorate a soil which contains too much alumina, by a surface application, much judgment is necessary. The most obvious application is sand, either from the sea-shore or drift, road scrapings, coal ashes, &c. but if these are not applied largely, the soil is rendered even worse and more difficult of cultivation; for I have seen such soils, which have had a slight dressing of silicious matters as above enumerated, rendered thereby so approaching in constitution to brick earth, that in dry weather. they have become so hard as to defy any power but that of a volcano to break them up. A soil is not rendered sterile by an excess of alumina, unless it contains nearly 50 per cent of it; and, to such, nothing short of 40 tons of sand per acre would be of unalloyed benefit.

Yet

If a soil is unproductive, from containing too much silica, the obvious application to improve its staple is clay and chalk. Four hundred parts of soil of Bagshot Heath contain 380 parts of silicious sand. It is completely barren. Sir Humphry Davy, who made this analysis, found that a good turnip soil in Norfolk contained 8 parts out of 9, silicious sand. Such light soils, however, are more manageable, for they are always capable of tillage; and the cultivator can render them more absorbent and retentive of moisture, by means of vegetable manures, chalk, &c. Such soils are termed hungry, for the yard manure applied to them is soon exhausted, and for this reason, that its mucilaginous and

únctuous constituents will not combine, with even a slight degree of affinity, with silica, which they will with alumina and chalk. At the same time, light soils admit rain into their texture, and to carry away their fertile constituents in the drainage waters; and the same openness of texture likewise permits the free access of air to hasten the putrefaction of the vegetable matters they contain, as well as the easy escape of the gases which are evolved, and all which, we have before shown, are equally beneficial to plants. Silica may abound to a much greater extent in a soil than any other of its usual constituents, without being unfavourable to vegetation. Chalk should never be present in a soil to a greater extent than 6 or 8 per cent; decomposable animal and vegetable matter to no more than 10 per cent; nor can the saline constituents soluble in water, oxide of iron, &c., amount to more than 6 per cent, without injury proportionate to the excess.

Foreign impregnations, causing a soil to be sterile or impairing its productiveness, are rare.

Acids have been ranked among the causes of sterility; but a soil containing any in a free state never came under my notice, or under that of any other practical chemist of whom I have ever read, or with whom I have ever conversed. Some soils, or certain portions of a field not generally so affected, will be found to produce sorrel and other plants abounding in acids: and, as when chalk or any other neutraliser of acids is applied to such spots they cease to produce sour plants; it has been deemed a legitimate conclusion that those plants obtained their acids from the soil, which being removed or neutralised by the chalk, consequently destroyed the plants by depriving them of one of their chief constituents. To say the least of it, such an opinion betrays a very great ignorance of physiology and vegetable chemistry. In the first place, the food obtained by all plants from the soil is perfectly insipid when absorbed, and whilst rising through the vessels in the woods; and no secretion, acid, or otherwise marked, is ever found in it until it has been elaborated in the leaves. It is only to be detected in them, and more manifestly in the bark. The fact seems to be, that plants abounding in acids generally frequent a wet soil, and such soil is rendered less retentive of moisture by chalk again the contact of chalk with plants containing acids causes decomposition in them, ulcers, and if perpetually presented, death. Lastly, such sour soils, as they are termed, are usually as effectually cleared of acid plants by mixing them with other substances that will render them porous, and by underdraining them thoroughly, as they are by mixing chalk

with them. I never heard of more than one soil containing an uncombined acid, and that is in the Island of Java; near Batavia. There is a small stream there which contains free sulphuric acid (oil of vitriol); its banks being impregnated by it are, of course, barren. This stream flows into another, which, passing rapidly through a tenacious soil, is turbid from the mixture of aluminous particles with its waters. No sooner does the acidulated stream mingle with them than they become clear, for the acid combining the clayey particles forms sulphate of alumina, which is a perfectly soluble salt. (To be continued.)

ART. IX. On the Climate of the Eastern and Middle States of North America, with Reference to Horticulture. By Mr. WILLIAM WILSON of New York.

Sir,

THE increase of correct knowledge on subjects in which men feel interested is at least gratifying to them, and frequently attended with benefit to others. Whether the result of the present subject will be attended with either of these effects in your country, I know not; in this, I think, it may be productive of both.

America (I allude to the eastern and middle states) is a country whose horticultural character can scarcely yet be considered as formed, in an artificial point of view; but there are abundant evidences that it possesses a naturally far more congenial climate for horticultural productions than most other countries. The want of those external, artificial, horticultural refinements, so conspicuous in European countries, and particularly in England, has been the ground of a very erroneous and detrimental impression of the actual inferiority of its climate to that of those countries. This impression has long been augmented by the vast superiority which emigrants from England very naturally, some of them very pertinaciously, ascribe to the climate of their native land, being either unable or unwilling to discriminate between the results of natural and artificial effects. With a view to benefit my fellow-citizens, by removing this impression, and to encourage them to avail themselves of the favourableness of the climate, I have endeavoured to demonstrate, by actual facts, its superiority to that of England; I have contrasted, I think upon a fair scale, the horticultural effects of the natural powers of this climate and that of England. If the grounds I have proceeded on are just, the preference in favour of this climate, at least for

the articles I have particularised, will, I think, be found undeniable.

To compare the horticultural products cultivated by artificial means in one country, with those of any other where no such artificial means were necessary to bring the same kinds of products to perfection, would be like comparing the natural climate of Iceland with that of Jamaica; because, in the former, orange trees might be as well cultivated in the greenhouse, as they are in the open air in the latter. Yet there can be no more justice in denying the superiority of this climate to that of England, for every article it is capable of bringing to perfection more than that of England, than there would be in asserting that, because the orange tree could be grown as well in Iceland as in Jamaica, that therefore the climate of the latter was not superior to that of the former. With the admission of one of these species of reasoning, the whole fraternity of horticulturists might as well be transmogrified into a race of funguses altogether. Several communications published in the New York Farmer and Horticultural Repository, on this subject, display a mode of reasoning more like the effusions of some kind of vegetable than animal production; and, were it not for the lively strain of irritation (not common to vegetables) kept up through the whole discussion, it might be considered more an affair of pumpkins and squashes than the actual bickerings of highly excited horticulturists. The subject, however, of the superiority of the American climate to that of England, for horticulture, is an interesting one; and being perfectly within the cognizance of the horticulturists of the present day, nothing can be easier than to obtain correct information of the difference between them, by obtaining a list of all those products which, in the natural climate of each, can be raised and grown to perfection, as well as a list of those that require artificial aid to bring them to perfection in the one country, but which, from the superior congeniality of climate in the other, require no such assistance. In the twelfth number of the New York Farmer and Horticultural Repository I have published a list of thirteen kinds of fruit and vegetables, which are all grown to perfection in the open garden or the field in this climate; the correctness of which statement can be corroborated by every experienced horticulturist in this country. I have proposed Mr. Buel of Albany as an umpire, if necessary, on the subject; and to your decision I have submitted the determination whether they can be so cultivated in the natural climate of England:

List.- Grape, Peach, Nectarine, Cucumber, Melon, Water Melon, Pumpkin var. Vegetable Marrow, Squash, Indian Corn, Lima Beans, Pepper, Tomatoes, Okra.