haps, peat meadows, possess sufficient of these to supply all the inorganic matter, which plants will need, for centuries to come. Salts and geine may vary and must be modified and supplied by cultivation. These views lead to Dr. Samuel L. Dana's simple and accurate mode of analysing soils-a mode that at once determines the value of a soil from its quantity of soluble and insoluble geine and salts of lime, magnesia, &c.

Rules of Analysis.

1. "Sift the soil through a fine sieve. Take the fine part; bake it just up to browning paper.

2. "Boil one hundred grains of the baked soil, with fifty grains of pearlashes, saleratus or carbonate of soda, in four ounces of water, for half an hour; let it settle; decant the clear; wash the ground with four ounces boiling water; throw all on a weighed filter, previously dried at the same temperature as was the soil; wash till colorless water returns. Mix all these liquors. It is a brown colored solution of all the soluble geine. All sulphats have been converted into carbonates, and with any phosphats, are on the filter. Dry therefore, that, with its contents, at the same heat as before. Weigh-the loss is soluble geine.

3. "If you wish to examine the geine, precipitate the alkaline solution with excess of lime water. The geate of lime will rapidly subside, and if lime water enough has been added, the nitrous liquor will be colorless. Collect the geate of lime on a filter; wash with a little acetic or very dilute muriatic acid, and you have geine quite pure. Dry and weigh.

4. "Replace on a fuunel the filter and its earthy contents; wash with two drams muriatic acid, diluted with three times its bulk of cold water. Wash till tasteless. The carbonate and phosphate of lime will be dissolved with a little iron, which has resulted from the decomposition of any salts of iron,

besides a little oxyd of iron. The alumina will be scarcely touched. We may estimate all as salts of lime. Evaporate the muriatic solution to dryness, weigh and dissolve in boiling water. The insoluble will be phosphat of lime. Weigh the loss is the sulphate of lime; (I make no allowance here for the difference in atomic weights of the acids, as the result is no consequence in this analysis.)

5. "The earthy residuum, if of a greyish white color, contains no insoluble geine-test it by burning a weighed small quantity on a hot shovel-if the odor of burning peat is given off, the presence of insoluble geine is indicated. If so, calcine the earthy residuum and its filter-the loss of weight will give the insoluble geine: that part which air and mois"ture, time and lime, will convert into soluble vegetable food. Any error here will be due to the loss of water in a hydrate, if one be present, but these exist in too small quantities in 'granite sand,' to affect the result. The actual weight of the residuary mass is 'granite sand.'

"The clay, mica, quartz, &c. are easily distinguished. If your soil is calcareous, which may be easily tested by acids; then boil one hundred grains in a pint of water, filter and dry as before, the loss of weight is due to the sulphate of lime, even the sulphate of iron may be so considered; for the ultimate result in cultivation is to convert this into sulphate of lime.

"Test the soil with muriatic acid, and having thus removed the lime, proceed as before, to determine the geine and insoluble vegetable matter."

Remarks.

On the first rule it may be remarked, that this method does not give us all the information needed. We want to know, how much geine, &c. is contain ed, not in the finer parts which will pass through a

sieve, only, but the quantity or percentage in the whole soil. How much in a given measure of land. I would substitute for the first rule something like the following. Take a measure of the soil, (and this measure may be from a half pint to a bushel, according to the size of the stones, pebbles, &c. mixed with the soil, throw it into a tub or other vessel of cold water, stir it well and let it settle, skim off all vegetable fibres, &c. that may swim, wash and take out the larger stones; all that can be easily separated in this manner, and put them back into the measure. Stir the water and pour it through a sieve into another vessel, wash the coarse sand and pebbles remaining in the sieve until all the pulverized earth adhering to it is added to that which before passed through the sieve, let it settle, decant the clear water, dry the sediment and proceed as directed in the rule. Put all the contents of the sieve back with the stones into the measure, and fill it up with water. Pour off the water, measure it, and in this manner ascertain what part of the measure is occupied by stone, and make all subsequent calculation accordingly. If the half bushel measure containing the stones will hold exactly eight quarts of water, then if your analysis of the fine parts give six per cent. of geine, put it down in the table three per cent., and so on. It would seem to me, also, well to save the undecomposed vegetable fibres, etc. dry, weigh and let their weight occupy another column in the table, as it must at least one year add to the value of the soil. Managing in this manner, we should no longer be misled by tables, that shew the best alluvial soils, less geine than most other varieties. Nearly the whole of these soils pass through the sieve Hence a cubic foot of this soil in situ may contain more geine than a cubic foot of a rocky soil in situ, which in the table shews a much higher percentage of the same constituent.

Since writing the preceding remarks I have received from Dr. Dana, the analysis of the soil on which I have experimented the two last years, and of the swamp muck used on the same in my compost manure. These I have added to the extracts from Professor Hitchcock's table annexed.

The muck is not so rich in geine as I had supposed, and the quantity of silicates much greater. It is not peat, but a rich black soil, full of water and lying on a bed of pure white, moderately coarse, quicksand-the same granitic sand that is mixed with the geine. The geine is, doubtless, formed chiefly of upland vegetables, and the leaves of trees, &c. growing on the adjacent hills, and washed down therefrom with the sand, into the depot where it now lies. The fertilizing qualities of this muck, proved by my experiments, and the knowledge now obtained of its constituents, suggests several important queries-viz: Does its whole value depend on its geine and salts of lime? Is not the sand on which it lies and with which it is mixed a "muck sand,”* possessing fertilizing qualities? Does it not contain a free alkali which Doctor Dana's mode of analysis would not detect? The last question I am able to answer in the affirmative, having tested and proved it alkaline.†

Three parcels of the soil on which my corn grew, taken from between the rows, manured as described in my statement, in the hills were mixed so as to get, as near as possible, an average lot as to quality, and from this lot the specimen analyzed by Doctor Dana, was taken. The results are stated in the table.

* Note, A.

†The purple juice of cabbage,'blossoms of violets, and other vegetables, obtained by macerating them in pure water, is changed to a red color when mixed with a liquid in which any acid predominates, and to a green when it contains any pure alkali. Pour pure hot water on peat muck or other specimens of soil, let it settle, pour off the clear liquor and mix with it some vegetable purple juice, and its acid or alkaline condition will be soon determined by the change of color.