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It is to the suggestion of Mæcenas that we owe Virgil's most perfect poem, his "Georgics," which he commenced after the publication of the "Bucolics." To suppose these four books of verses on soils, fruit-trees, horses and cattle, and finally on bees, as a practical treatise to guide and instruct the farmer, is absurd. Few farmers have time or inclination to read so elaborate a work.
It was not until the middle thirties that the broadest expanse of the bottoms, the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, began to receive its great influx. The rest of the western cotton belt had soils varying through much the same range as those of Georgia and the Carolinas.
Below these massive obstructions, and opposite the mouth of the ravine, the channel had expanded into a pool; in which the waters might have regained their tranquillity and rolled along in peace, but for the presence of an island, which, growing up in the centre of the expanse, consolidated by the roots of a thousand willows and other trees that delight in such humid soils, and, in times of flood, covered by a raft of drift timber entangled among its trees, presented a barrier, on either side of which the current swept with speed and fury, though, as it seemed, entirely unopposed by rocks.
I have had excellent success on the Hudson in late autumn planting. My method has been to cover the young plants, just before the ground froze, with two or three inches of clean earth, and then to rake it off again early in April. The roots of such plants become thoroughly established during the winter, and start with double vigor. Plants set out in LATE autumn do best on light, dry soils.
The governor divided his bag of rice between Stephen Bull, Joseph Woodward, and some other friends, who agreed to make the experiment, and planted their small parcels in different soils. Upon trial they found it answered their highest expectations. Some years afterwards, Mr.
The winding road downwards became just visible to her under the wan starlight as she followed it, and soon she paced a soil so contrasting with that above it that the difference was perceptible to the tread and to the smell. It was the heavy clay land of Blackmoor Vale, and a part of the Vale to which turnpike-roads had never penetrated. Superstitions linger longest on these heavy soils.
The facts here mentioned are in accordance with the microscopical observations made by Koch, who states that the micro-organisms in the soils he has investigated diminish rapidly in number with an increasing depth; and that at a depth of scarcely 1 meter the soil is almost entirely free from bacteria. Some very practical conclusions may be drawn from the facts now stated.
They are, in short, loamy or clay soils, and must have been sufficiently above water to admit of drainage. The absence of sulphurets, and the occurrence of carbonate of iron in connection with them, prove that, when they existed as soils, rain-water, and not sea-water, percolated them. The coal and the fossil forests present many evidences of subaërial conditions.
It is sometimes called lime phosphate, although it contains no lime in the true sense, for it has no power to neutralize acid soils, except when the phosphorus is taken up by plants more rapidly than the calcium, which in such case might remain in the soil to act as a base to neutralize soil acids; but even then the effect of the small amount of calcium thus liberated from the phosphate would be very insignificant compared with a liberal application of ground limestone."
Of the entomology of mountain streams little as yet is known: but a few scattered hints may suffice to show that in them, as well as in the chalk rivers, a little natural science might help the angler. The well-known fact that smaller flies are required on the moors than in the lowlands, is easily explained by the fact that poorer soils and swifter streams produce smaller insects.
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