Miscellanea Curiosa.

Agriculture, will easily subscribe to this. They are well aware that, be their Earth never so rich, so good, and so fit for the production of Corn or other Vegetables, little will come of it, unless the Parts of it be separated and loose. 'Tis on this Account they bestow the Pains they do in Culture of it, in Digging, Plowing, Harrowing, and Breaking of the Clodded Lumps of Earth. 'Tis the same way that Sea-salt, Nitre, and other Salts, promote Vegetation. I am sorry I cannot subscribe to the Opinion of those Learned Gentlemen, who imagine Nitre to be essential to Plants; and that nothing in the Vegetable Kingdom is transacted without it. By all the Trials I have been able to make, the thing is quite otherwise; and when contiguous to the Plant, it rather destroys than nourishes it. But this Nitre and other Salts certainly do; they loosen the Earth, and separate the concreted Parts of it; by that means fitting and disposing them to be assumed by the Water, and carried up into the Seed or Plant, for its Formation and Augment. There's no Man but must observe, how apt all sorts of Salts are to be wrought upon by Moisture; how easily they liquate and run with it; and when these are drawn off, and have deserted the Lumps wherewith they were incorporated, those must moulder immediately, and fall asunder of Course. The hardest Stone we meet with, if it happen, as frequently it does, to have any sort of Salt intermix'd with the Sand, of which it consists, upon being expos'd to an humid Air, in a short time dissolves and crumbles all to pieces; and much more will clodded Earth or Clay, which is not of near so compact and solid a Constitution as Stone is. The same way likewise is Lime serviceable in this Affair. The Husbandmen say of it, that it does not fatten, but only mellows the Ground: By which they mean, that it does not contain any thing in it