The Press.
London, England, 1857-12-19 00:00:00

1134

either by the showers, the excessive heat of summer, or
the svfere cold of winter.
Now the advantages recognised at the present day as
arising from the practice of burning the soil, and the
plants which cover its surface, are very much of the de-
scripti in which Virgil has stated
In ;he first place, when a large amount of slowly decom-
posing vegetable matter happens to be present, it accele•
rates the return into the body of the soil of the alkaline
and earthly constituents which the plants contain, so as
to render these essential ingredients immediately available

for the ensuing crop.
In other words :

Occultas vires et pabula terror

Concipiunt.
This is the source of the fertility imparted to the soil in
America by the combustion of the timber in its extensive
forests; the tire unlocking, as it were, these accumulations
of potass, phosphate of lime, and other valuaole matters,
which the trees in their growth had gradually drawn from
the soil, and restoring them at once in a condition in
which they can minister to the wants of the forthcoming
crops.
Secondly, when the soil is sour, or contains peaty matter,
which generates acetic or other acids prejudicial to the
growth of plants, the practice of burning dissipates and
destroys the injurious principle, ur, as Virgil says—

_
tins omne per ignera
Eicoquitur vitium, atque exsudat inutilis humor.

Burning also may do good to the soil, when it is too reten-
tive of moisture, and too adhesive in quality. My friend
Mr. Barwick Baker of Hardwick l'ou't in Gloucestershire
has by this treatment improved the soil of his garden,
which was a tenacious clay, converting it into a kind of
brick earth, which possesses much of the mechanical
qualities of a sandstone.
For such a case it may be said in the beautiful language
of the Roman poet
Plures calor ille vies et MCA re lexat
Spiramenta, novas veniat qua succus in herbas
Whether the process of burning can ever act in the last
of the ways hinted at by Virgil, that is, by rendering loose
soils more compact, is very problematical ; indeed it is
even generally considered by agriculturists, that light and
sandy soils are injured by the operation.
In his handling of the pone asinorum of the
first Georgic—the description of the plough—
the Doctor has not, we think, been very suc-
cessful. There seems to have been some
blunder in this part of his work, for the letters
in the letterpress do not correspond with those
in the plates. At all events, we have not been
much enlightened by this particular piece of
explanation.
In his lecture upon the cultivation of trees,
the most remarkable points dwelt upon by
our author are the great disproportion between
the yields of modern and ancient vineyards—
the latter appearing to be the fuller by nearly
two-thirds—and the fallacies of Roman writers
on the subject of grafting. According to
modern notions, very few trees admit of being
successfully grafted : so that most of the
directions given by Virgil are useless, and the
seventeen or twenty kinds of grafting enume-
rated by Palladius are found to be fabulous.
The mistake seems to have originated in the
practice of grafting by boring a hole in the
trunk (the enodes trunei of Virgil), and insert-
ing a cutter, which sometimes struck through
to the ground, and took root in the soil, while
it was all the time supposed to be growing out
of the wood. We may observe in passing that
the fourteenth book of Palladius' " De Insi-
tione "—which, in imitation of Columella's last
book, he has thrown into verse—deserves to
be better known. The versification is very
smooth, and the command of expression mar-
vellous—the poet describing the same process
nearly twenty times over, each time in different,
but perfectly appropriate, phraseology. Pal-
ladius is supposed to have lived in the fourth
century.
Dr. Daubeny now proceeds to the subject of
live stock. After briefly adverting to the fact
that oxen and sheep among the ancients were
in demand rather for the purposes of draught
than for the supply cf beef and mutton, and
showing that Virgil's enumeration of the
" points " of a horse or a bullock still in the
main hold good, the Doctor passes on to the
consideration' of the aviaries, fishponds, and
other still more peculiar preserves, in fashion
among the ancients. As beef, mutton, and
veal were in little request at Roman ban-
quets, the value of poultry, game, and fish
was proportionably enhanced. Columella,
though ho says little or nothing of fattening
sheep or beasts, gives minute directions for
the cramming of fowls, pigeons, and thrushes
Dormice, too, were another peculiar Roman
luxury, and were usually fattened in stone
jars upon acorns, walnuts, and chesnuts. The
lnagnitude of the Roman preserves fin• fish of
all kinds, shell fish, sea fish, and fresh-water

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