is impossible either to foresee or calculate. The cultivation of new and valuable artificial grasses, the discovery of new manures, or the more skilful application of those already known, might prove the means of rendering soils, now considered barren, highly productive to the country. The application of science, skill, and industry to the pursuits of agriculture, is, in many instances, capable of surmounting the most formidable obstacles which nature may oppose to the success of the farmer. Hence it arises that the naturally barren sands of Norfolk, as they are now managed, yield probably more human food than the most fertile loams on the banks of our rivers. It is probable, indeed, that no species of soil can properly be described as absolutely barren : it is now unproductive solely because its owners may be ignorant of the plants adapted to its nature, or of the manures which would call its powers into activity; but the most ingenious, the most delightful, and the most useful of all occupations-the cultivation of the soil-too often falls into the hands of men totally destitute of the information and skill required for improving it; and to this circumstance must be ascribed the very tardy, and fluctuating manner in which it is found to advance towards perfection. The influence of the landowners, if judiciously exerted, might do much to remove the obstacles which too frequently impede the progress of agriculture. They have before them an instance of energy and resources combined for the purpose of enlightening the minds and improving the manual dexterity of the manufacturing and mechanical classes; are the parties who concentrate their exertions for the benefit of these classes, half so deeply interested in the result of their efforts, as the landlords of this country ought to be in the diffusion of scientific knowledge among the actual cultivators of the soil? Strenuous exertions are made to increase the cunning' of the fingers of the weaver; why not try to sharpen the wits, and add to the intelligence of the practical farmer?

What we would desire to see is, a series of concise and perspicuous tracts, condensing all the really practical information which has been already made public upon the various branches of rural

Sir

Soils abounding in metallic impregnations are, in general, of the sterile class, and among these the refuse of lead mines is one of the most remarkable for sterility. Yet, even in this soil, which is so peculiarly poisonous to most plants, the arenaria verna grows with luxuriance, and it can scarcely be made to live in any other soil. Joseph Banks made an attempt to raise it in his garden, but before he could succeed, he was obliged to send to the mines for a quantity of its native lead rubbish; which having been put into a pit made for that purpose, soon became covered with this plant, although every effort to make it thrive in other soils, not adulterated by metallic impregnation, had proved utterly unsuccessful. Covered with the arenaria verna, this patch appeared as fertile as any other part of the baronet's garden; but if the seeds of this plant had been there wanting, that soil would have remained incurably barren, and unproductive of any other known plant.

economy: such a succession of treatises discarding all visionary and wild speculations, and embracing only details proved by actual experience to be useful, might with very great advantage be circulated among the cultivators of the soil.

The common fault of almost all the agricultural publications which have fallen in our way is, that they are too general-too systematic. This is the real source of the prejudice which exists among the agricultural body against what they call book-farming.' It is the fashion with such authors to deal out one set of precepts, which they represent as suitable to all soils-like the charlatan before whose solitary nostrum all diseases must give way. A Norfolk agriculturist, occupying a sandy soil, in a climate where perhaps the fall of rain does not exceed twenty inches per annum, makes a successful experiment in husbandry: he publishes an account of it in some book or magazine, which falls into the hands of a Cornish farmer, who, fired with the display of profit derived from the experiment in Norfolk, resolves to try it in his own fields; but his soil being different in some essential ingredient, and the climate twice as moist as that of Norfolk, the experiment entirely fails he then kicks his system,' vows he will never read a book upon agriculture again, and relapses into the old routine practice handed down to him by his forefathers. A rotation of crops taken from books, even books in high estimation, may be dangerous, because either the climate or the soil, or the command of manure, or the stock and intelligence of the cultivator, to which the book refers, and which were familiar to the writer, may all, or, at least, some of them, be extremely different. Hence the absurdity of prescribing rules dogmatically, while these discriminating circumstances are overlooked: and here was one of the rocks upon which the late Board of Agriculture contrived to split. If this institution had contented itself with the useful labour of ascertaining and making known the various agricultural practices prevalent in different districts, and in registering experiments with an exact and precise description of the different circumstances of soil, heat, and moisture, under which they were made, it would, in all probability, have been alive and flourishing at this hour: but the ruling spirits soared high above such a task; nothing would serve them but to form a general 'code,' which was to regulate the agricultural operations of the whole kingdom: and the absurdity of this plan, combined with some foolish inquiries in which the agents of the board thought proper to busy themselves, about the management of private property, the amount of rent, tithes, taxes, &c. excited feelings which ended in the dissolution of the establishment.

Attempts are often made to depreciate agriculture in public estimation,

estimation, by holding it up as a mean and degrading art, fit to occupy the attention only of boors and clowns; no representation can be more unfounded: on the contrary, there is no art which requires of the true professors of it such various knowledge, and such consummate judgment. No pursuit admits so little of the assistance of set and decisive rules,-the leading strings of the mind. Not only every district, not only every farm in every disstrict, but almost every field upon every farm, will be found to present some variety of soil and surface requiring a mode of management peculiar to itself; and, were agriculture to engage, in all time coming, its full share of the intellect of man, the most useful and important of human arts would still, we have no doubt, be the last to reach perfection.

We venture to solicit attention and encouragement to agriculture, not to the exclusion-not to the injury or neglect of manufactures and commerce: we warmly advocate the cause of agriculture, not merely as an act of justice towards the class of individuals who have embarked the fruit of their labour-their capital in this pursuit; but for the sake of manufactures and commerce: the prosperity of agriculture is the only basis on which these great branches of our national industry can securely and permanently rest: the more widely this foundation is extended, the deeper it is laid, the more carefully it is cherished, the more prosperous, the more active, and the more stable must the manufacturing and commercial establishments of the country be rendered: depending for support principally upon the productions of our own territory, they will add more to the national wealth; they will be exposed to fewer reverses and casualties than similar establishments which draw their supplies from foreign sources.

ART. IV.-Memoir on the Geology of Central France; including the Volcanic Formations of Auvergne, the Velay, and the Vivarais, with a Volume of Maps and Plates. By G. P. Scrope, F.R.S., F.G.S. London. 1827.

IT

T was common enough to hear travellers who visited Paris soon after the close of the late war, comparing France to a spent volcano, and dwelling, in good set terms, both on the visible marks of the terrific violence with which her social system had been shaken, and on the complete exhaustion to which, after carrying desolation into all surrounding countries, that system had been reduced. We entertain no wish to indulge in any such metaphors at present; but have to lay before our readers a plain matter-of-fact statement, which may, perhaps, surprise some

of

of them, namely, that the Central region of France, the primitive nucleus as it were of the whole territory, was once the seat of volcanic agency (now perhaps extinct); and that agency, too, on a stupendous scale, and of longer continuance than has hitherto been established with respect to any other portion of Europe. Mr. Scrope's work, on the Geology and extinct Volcanos of Auvergne, Velay, and Vivarais, will, we are persuaded, have the effect of attracting, in future, to those provinces a portion of our countrymen who are now continually crossing and re-crossing France along the same beaten tracks, and returning home with complaints of the absence of all grandeur and picturesque features in the scenery. The most remarkable of the phenomena of Auvergne to which we shall particularly advert, may be studied at Clermont, a town situated only two hundred and twenty English miles from Paris, where, as well as at the baths of Mont Dor, in its vicinity, the traveller finds excellent accommodation; yet has this country-so accessible that it may be reached in a journey of less than forty hours by the public conveyance from Paris-been permitted to remain as unknown to the majority of English tourists as are the interior parts of New Holland to our infant colonies on its coast. That this district should only have been discovered by the French themselves, as a theatre of extinct volcanos, in the middle of the last century; that since that period so few of them should have visited it; that most of the minor details of its history should still remain to be worked out, while in the mean time the strata in the immediate environs of Paris, with their innumerable organic contents, have been investigated with microscopic accuracy-all these are circumstances which excite in us no surprise, for there was truth as well as satire in Madame de Staël's observation: En France on ne pense qu'à Paris, et l'on a raison, car c'est toute la France.' But that our own countrymen, who have poured over the Alps and Apennines in such multitudes, that, could we forget the history of our times, one might imagine Napoleon to have constructed his splendid roads for their sole use and pleasure; that so few of these restless and indefatigable spirits should have visited the phlegrean fields of Auvergne, as well as those of Italy, compared the volcanic craters of central France with those of Vesuvius and Etna, or the beautiful basaltic columns of Montpezat and Jaujac with those of Fingal's Cave and the Giant's Causeway, these are problems almost as difficult of solution as any of those discussed by Mr. Scrope.

It is true that a descriptive work in English, upon this extraordinary country, was, until now, a desideratum; but Faujas St. Fond's account, Des Volcans éteints du Vivarais et Velay,' was published

published in the year 1778, and was not unknown in England. His large engravings might have convinced every admirer of nature, that the scenes intended to be represented must possess singular, as well as highly picturesque features, whatever suspicions might have been entertained of the inaccuracy and exaggeration which did, in fact, characterize too many of his sketches. Besides the account of Faujas St. Fond, the volcanos of Auvergne, Velay, and Vivarais, had been treated of by Messieurs Desmarest, Montlosier, De Buch, d'Aubuisson, and Baron Ramond-in works of considerable merit, but of too scientific a character to attract general attention in this country, particularly at a time when a taste for geological investigation was only beginning to diffuse itself amongst us. With the exception of a short paper, in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, for 182021, by Dr. Daubeny, we believe no account of Auvergne was given to the public by any of our countrymen, until the works of Mr. Scrope and Dr. Daubeny On Volcanos' came out nearly at the same time. The latter prefaced his able account of active and extinct volcanos by a brief sketch, chiefly derived from original observation, of the rocks belonging to both those classes in the interior of France; while Mr. Scrope introduced many of the facts now recorded in full detail in the excellent memoir before us, as illustrative of various theories in which he freely indulged himself. His bold speculations embraced almost all the mysterious causes of subterranean phenomena; nay, not even satisfied with explaining the fluidity of lava and the action of earthquakes, he ascended to the surface and revealed to us a new system of cosmogony; and, in short, his new facts were either received with scepticism, as brought to support theoretical views to which they appeared quite subordinate, or altogether overlooked amidst the astonishment created at such sweeping generalizations. The present treatise was written, it seems, in 1822, long before the appearance of the Considerations on Volcanos.' Had it been communicated to the public in its present state at that period, it would have afforded proofs of powers of investigation and sound inductive reasoning, which would have ensured far greater consideration for Mr. Scrope's theoretical views. But we are much mistaken if we do not recognize in the style, as well as in the arrangement of the Memoir, the revising hand of one who has acquired in the meantime both more extended information and maturer judgment.

In a passage cited from Montlosier as a motto to this publication, it is truly remarked that a chemist may be an indifferent naturalist and a bad geologist; he may learn in his laboratory how nature has formed a stone, but he must be taught by a different

course