Another circumstance which has contributed to an increased difficulty in growing clover on thin soils will be found in the farmer discarding as antiquated the practice of paring and burning, which was formerly the usual preparation for the turnip crop. In a paper on “Paring and Burning,” in the 18th volume of the _Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society_, Professor Voelcker remarks:— The ashes produced by paring and burning are especially useful to turnips, and also to other green crops, because they contain a large proportion of phosphates and potash—constituents which, it is well known, favour in a high degree the luxuriant growth of root-crops. Further, the learned professor closes a most able paper with the following conclusions:— Paring and burning, instead of being an antiquated operation, is a practice the advantages of which are fully confirmed and explained by modern chemical science. Paring and burning, to judge from our own experience, had the effect of converting some of the hard limestone brash into lime, in which case it broke up by the influences of air and rain, and so restored the lime and alumina which mostly exist together in limestone, the former of which is quickly lost in thin soils,—so much so, indeed, that not unfrequently the whole depth of soil, even upon a limestone, will often be curiously devoid of lime, which is a necessary ingredient in the constitution of a clover crop. Again, we should conclude that the operation under discussion, from its decomposing that dark vegetable matter called _humus_, which is always found in large quantities on some of the soils which are called “_dead_,” from their inability to produce crops, and which often cause astonishment that such black, nice-looking earth should be unproductive. Now this soil, though it would favour the growth of some species of peat-loving plants, as Ling, Heath, &c., is not suitable for clover, as the wild plant is curiously absent from peaty positions. Professor Voelcker remarks that “the excess of undecomposed organic matters in soils is decidedly injurious to vegetation. Roots, stems, and other vegetable matters remain buried in the ground for years without undergoing decomposition, and if we attentively study the subjoined analysis of soil in the neighbourhood of Cirencester, well adapted for burning, we shall see how the _lime_, _alumina_, and _organic matter_ might be beneficially affected by the process:— ANALYSIS OF SOIL ADAPTED FOR BURNING, BY PROFESSOR VOELCKER.