In the same communication to the Society, I presented my ideas on the proper application of manure; to wit, _always to bury it up quickly, when carried to the field_, to prevent great loss by its exposure to the sun and air; remarking, that the essence of manure was lost, not by _sinking_ into the earth below the roots of cultivated plants, but by _rising_ into the atmosphere, and so fleeing away. Here, also, I have the satisfaction of seeing the theory I had formed nineteen years ago (in the manner suggested in that communication) supported by the opinions and practices of such eminent agriculturists as Messrs. Arbuthnot and Ducket. After noticing Arbuthnot's cultivation of madder, an article requiring a rich soil and extremely deep tillage, Mr. Young says, "there was one circumstance in his management, which, being applicable to more important articles, merits a more durable attention; this is, the depth to which he ploughed in the dung: his tillage went to that of eighteen inches; and he conceived there was no danger of losing, by this circumstance, either _vegetable_ or _animal_ manures, as _their_ tendency, contrary to all _fossil_ ones, was not to _sink_, but to _rise_ in the atmosphere." Fossil manures are lime, marl, plaster of Paris, and other substances dug out of the earth, which increase the productive powers of soils. Mr. Ducket's manner of applying dung, although his was a sand farm, was similar to Mr. Arbuthnot's.--"Immediately connected with the depth of tillage, is that to which dung may be safely deposited. He [Mr. Ducket] had not the least apprehension of losing it by deep ploughing; but freely turned it down to two or three times the depth common among his neighbours." Yet Mr. Young says, that farmers (and good farmers too) persist in a contrary practice. But he adds, "Enlightened individuals, thinly scattered, know better: having convinced themselves that Mr. Ducket's practice is not only safe but beneficial;" and then names one who "ploughs in his dung as deeply as his ploughs can go, turning it in nine inches, and would bury it twelve, did he stir to such a depth." Confirmatory of the correctness of the practice of these two celebrated English farmers, is the fact stated by Mr. John Sinclair, President of the British Board of Agriculture, in his account of the Improved Scottish Husbandry. He mentions one farmer who ridged his carrot ground, and buried the manure sixteen or seventeen inches deep, the ridges thirty inches wide. This farmer preferred, as a manure, a well prepared compost of peat-moss[13] and dung, ten tons, or double cart-loads, per English acre. "The dung (or compost) being at the bottom, makes the tap root of the carrot push immediately down, and swell to an enormous size; the roots being often sixteen inches in girt, and 18 or twenty inches in length." [13] In Scotland their peat-lands are called peat-mosses.