-of consolidating boggy and mossy lands-as a destroyer of certain kinds of weeds-and as the cause of warmth in winter, and of coolness in summer. The banks of streams which are occasionally flooded, are found to yield the richest grass. The tender roots and leaves of grass, covered in winter or in the beginning of spring by water, are protected from frost; and there is no soil, situation, or climate in which watering grass land is not serviceable. One preliminary, however, is always and everywhere necessary-the land must be effectually drained.

Chalk, or sandy and gravelly soils, are best suited for irrigation, the effect upon them being more markedly beneficial and immediate than upon cold clay soils; but every description of soil is benefited thereby. Land may, by proper irrigation, be kept in a state of perpetual fertility without manure; and comparatively poor land will thereby be rendered capable of yielding a large bulk of hay, and abundance of the best grass, often early in the spring, when it is doubly valuable. The finest water meadows on the Avon, in Wiltshire, where the richest herbage is found, have scarcely any soil, but chiefly consist of a bed of shingly pebbles and gravel, matted together by the roots of the grass, which is nourished by irrigation with the water of the river.

When there is a considerable fall, and a sufficient supply of water, a series of channels may be formed, at levels below each other, so that the second shall collect the water supplied by the first, and distribute it over the space between it and the third; and so on, till the fall is lost, or the water exhausted. Winter and spring are the time for irrigating. The mode of doing this, is to keep water passing over the surface of the land with a gentle current, not so rapid as to wash away the soil; and it should be in sufficient quantity to cover and nourish the roots, but yet not so much as to hide the tops of the grass.

The advantages of irrigation consist principally m conveying oxygen to the roots of the plants, and this is obtained from the water of rivers and streams, which holds oxygen in solution. The quantity of water need

not be great, so that it is sufficient to cover the surface, and if it be frequently renewed. A meadow is not to be converted into a marsh by being covered for several months with stagnant water; but is to be fertilized by passing a gentle current over it for short periods, and with occasional intermissions.

A little experience as to regulating the quantity of water, and length of time for flooding, is all that is required in ordinary cases. A very small stream, if it has a considerable fall, may be carried over a great extent of ground, and be used successively several times; but good management will be required in order to make the most of it, if the stream be very small. Losing fall is, in such case, a wasting of the stream.

The process of watering generally commences in the month of October, when the aftergrass has been consumed, or the second crop of hay removed. The water is kept on the ground for periods of a fortnight or three weeks at a time; it is then let off, and the ground laid dry for five or six days. This process of alternately flooding and drying, is generally continued during the months of November, December, and January, care being taken to let off the water when it begins to freeze hard. As the spring advances, and the grasses shoot up, the periods of watering are shortened, so that the flooding shall not last more than five or six days at a time.

In the southern counties of England, the meadows, after being irrigated, will be ready for the stock about the end of March; but in the more northern districts, where vegetation does not make such early progress, the flooding is continued till the month of May, after which a crop of hay, and sometimes two, are produced.

Wherever the levels are favourable, a great extent of land may be easily and cheaply improved by irrigation; and every spring and rivulet might be thus turned to important use, fertilizing a smaller or larger surface, in proportion to its magnitude. The water obtained in draining the land might also, in many instances, be applied to the purposes of irrigation; and thus a double advantage would be gained, first by relieving the soil

from an excess of moisture which was injurious, and then by converting the water so obtained into a means of fertilizing the land.

BURNING OF LAND.

The burning of land is a pernicious mode of preparing it for crops, much practised in Ireland, especially in the western districts; but good dry land should never be burned, as it dissipates the finer portions of the soil, and reduces to ashes, of little comparative efficacy for the production of one crop, fertilizing matter, which might, by other management, be made effective for the support of many crops.

Burning may nevertheless not be always and in every case inexpedient, for the most effective mode of destroying weeds and coarse herbage on cold, wet, and boggy land is unquestionably by the use of fire. If burning was only practised by those who would return to the ground in the shape of manure, as much as had thus been taken from it, little comparative injury would be done but the wrong which land sustains by burning is, the having the rich vegetable mould of its surface consumed, without any compensation whatever being returned to it; and it is thus left, after the first stimulating effects have subsided, in a state of complete exhaustion, and incapable of yielding nourishment to any description of crop.

The burning of coarse boggy lands, and wet rushy moors, is often the best and cheapest mode of reclaiming such ground. The process of fire on lands of this description, immediately destroys the coarse weeds and herbage, and by converting them into stimulating manure, forces a heavy crop. This will not, however, be the case, unless the land be previously well drained; and it is by omitting this essential preliminary, that much valuable labour is often lost, in the efforts made to bring such lands into cultivation.

Wherever burning is resorted to in the reclaiming of cold wet lands, let the ashes be equally spread, and turned in hot. Then take a crop of turnips, or rape, to

be eaten upon the ground by sheep; after which sow grass-seeds, with either barley or oats, and pasture these with sheep. If the land is broken up again in two or three years, a crop of oats may be taken, and the straw converted into manure, and applied to the ground preparatory to a green crop. This process will generally serve to put the land into good condition, as well as prove remunerating to the farmer.

MANURES.

Our fields might be kept in a constant state of fertility, by replacing every year as much as we remove from them in the form of produce; but by repeated cropping, the best soils will become exhausted, and require the application of manure, before they will yield a return to the labours of the husbandman.

Manures are of two classes,-putrescent, and fossil or calcareous. The first, consisting of animal and vegetable decomposing matter, is chiefly beneficial in feeding the plant; the other operates chiefly as a stimulant upon the soil. The first kind includes every description of animal and vegetable manure, and in the second class are ranked lime, marl, gypsum, sea-sand, and clay.

Animal and vegetable manures are putrescent in their nature, and consist of certain elementary parts of animal and vegetable substances. Every constituent of the body of man and animals is derived from plants, and the dung of all animals is no other than the remains of the vegetable or animal food which has been received into the stomach.

From the constant decay of organized matter, and its conversion into fluids and gases, it may be inferred that animal and vegetable substances, and excrementitious matter, are only different modifications of the same original principles. The active elements of them all are hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen, in some cases united with nitrogen. Conveyed by liquids or moist substances into the ground, these agents act as a nourishment to plants, and so form the principles of a new

vegetation. As flesh consists of a greater concentration of these elements than vegetables, the manure produced by carnivorous animals (man included) is more powerful in proportion to its bulk, than that of animals which live upon herbage alone.

The value of urine as a manure has long been known to farmers on the Continent, and especially in Switzerland and Flanders, where it is collected with the greatest care; and the Chinese, who are the oldest agricultural people we know, set so high a value upon human excrement for the purpose of manure, that laws are made to regulate its collection, and prevent its being thrown away. One quart of the urine of a man is considered equal in its fertilizing qualities, to six quarts of the urine of a cow, and to thirteen quarts of that of a horse. It hence appears how important it is to agriculture, that human urine should not be lost. For the most part only the solid excrements are used as manure in this country, but these contain the insoluble matters, whilst the urine contains the soluble salts and phosphates which existed in the plants at the time they were consumed by the animals, and which are necessary to vegetation.

Neither animal nor vegetable manures are practically of any use, until the active agents which they contain are disengaged by putrefaction. If the animal or vegetable substance does not decay or putrefy, it is of no more use than a stone. A piece of peat, for instance, is an inert vegetable mass, preserved from putrefaction by water, and certain antiseptic qualities in its substance. In this condition, it is valueless as a manure; but when we expose it to the atmosphere, and thus bring on decomposition, its character is changed, and we have a highly nutritious manure.

In the process of putrefaction, the elementary particles are set at liberty, in a fluid or volatile state. If stable dung be piled into a heap, and exposed to the weather, it soon becomes heated, and emits a vapour, composed of the escaping gases. The heap is seen constantly diminishing in weight and bulk; and at the end of six months, if there have been alternate