through them of animals. Of all the ancient
four, therefore, Earth has least right to its
title of Element. It is also the most recent,
the latest formed; for it had to be prepared
and manufactured by the combined action of the
other three. Moreover, from the continuance
of the same causes, the quantity of earth in the
world must be steadily increasing every day.

Soils are earth considered in respect to its
suitability for the growth of vegetables, or the
habitation of men. They are formed by the
combination of two or more of the primitive
earths, united with organic matter in a
state of decay. The three principal primitive
earths are flint or silex, clay, and lime, which
occur in a state of minute division, forming
unctuous impalpable matter, as well as in the
shape of sand, gravel, or shingle Soils are
often described in figurative terms. Rich and
poor soils, heavy and light soils, speak for
themselves. Hungry soils are such as are greedy of
manure, absorbing large quantities, and still
demanding more. Happily, they are not
insatiable. Mr. Coke of Holkham, and others, have
shown that, by judicious treatment, hungry
soils may be made to give grateful returns for
the good things bestowed upon them. Sour
soils are mostly clays impenetrable to water.
These, whether wet or dry, are equally
impracticable for the farmer. Drought makes them
as hard as rock, while the first shower softens
them into sloughs of despond. But all water-
logged soils are sour, especially such as repose
on a clayey subsoil. Draining is, therefore, the
best general remedy for sourness.

There are rocky, sandy, clayey, gravelly,
chalky, swampy, alluvial, and other soils. On
rocky soils and the slopes of hills, the vine
produces its very best. Wheat and beans thrive
on soils inclined to be clayey; turnips and
barley on those tending to be sandy. Oats and
hemp have no objection to well-drained and
reclaimed bog and swamp. Flax and tobacco
must have rich soils; rye and buckwheat will
do something in poor ones. Calcareous soils
are good for stone-fruit, witness the cherries of
Kent and the peaches of Montreuil; while
rhododendrons and other heath-mould plants are
killed by a small admixture of lime in the soil.
Magnesian soil has a bad reputation, which is
not always borne out by practical experience;
but magnesia is scarcer than the other earths,
and is found in smaller quantities. Gypsum in
the soil is good for clover, peas, lucerne, and
leguminous plants in general. Deep alluvial
soils are favourable to hops, and almost every
other plant you can name. For ourselves, that
is for the location of men, swampy and clayey
soils are the least salubrious, gravelly and chalky
the healthiest. The relative healthiness of rocky
sites often depends on circumstances extraneous
to the soil itself.

When silex is the principal ingredient of a
soil, it is in the shape of sand or gravel. The
friable nature of sandy soils makes them easily
cultivated. An excess of sand in any soil is
much less injurious than an excess of clay. Clay
is a compact adhesive substance, whose particles
are in minute division. It retains moisture with
great obstinacy, and retards decomposition in
vegetable and animal matter, probably by
excluding air. Unmixed clay is both difficult to
cultivate, and unproductive when cultivated.
Calcareous matter mostly enters a soil in the
shape of carbonate of lime, or chalk. Like pure
clay and pure silex, pure chalk is a barren soil.
Mixed, however, with sand and clay, it forms a
fruitful calcareous loam. Loam is a mixture of
clay and sand, and sometimes lime, combined
with animal and vegetable remains in various
proportions. It is the texture of loams, as well
as their elements, which render them so valuable
for agricultural purposes. Mould is soil which
consists principally of decayed vegetables
reduced to a light black powder, such as we see
in heaps of thoroughly rotten leaves and very
old hotbeds of stable manure. From it, the
soil of old gardens, bogs, and ancient forests
derives its blackness as well as its softness and
friability. French gardeners scrupulously economise,
under the name of "terreau," all the
vegetable mould they can find or fabricate, holding
it to be the best of manures, and almost the
only one which does not injure the quality of
wine made from grapes grown with its assistance.

If air drinks water, and water imbibes air,
earth greedily absorbs them both, and so
becomes a habitable home for the mole, the worm,
the larva, and the perfect insect. So beautifully
has the organisation of those creatures been
adapted to their "element," that earth is as
much the medium for the mole and for sundry
grubs and insects to live in, as water is for the
fish. What a helpless creature an earthworm
is, either free on the surface or fallen into a
pool! In the ground it is active, at home, and
no doubt happy. A mole out of earth is in
scarcely less pitiable plight than a fish out of
water—more so, certainly, than the eel or the
flying-fish, without reckoning the fishes which
climb up trees. The limbs of moles are so
fitted for swimming in earth, that on earth they
can hardly be said to walk. They paddle along
and push themselves on, somehow. If they
roll over, woe betide them! I have found
moles that had ventured into upper air, lying
flat on their backs unable to stir, and waiting
for some bird or beast of prey, or simply for
hunger (of which they are very impatient), to
put an end to their distress. If a friendly push
with a stick or a foot set them on their legs
again, they disappear underground with wonderful
rapidity, firmly resolving, doubtless, never
again to fall into a like predicament. Their
out-turned palms, their velvet coats, their shovel
like paws, their defective eyes, their quick ears,
their fine scent, their hog-like snouts, their
muscular power, all combine to fit them for life
in earth.

So great is the harmony of terrestrial arrangements,
that earth cures the maladies brought
on by ocean; while ocean cures those incidental
to earth. Feeble constitutions afflicted with