and fixt body to be ioyned with them doe loose all strength of binding
or holding together. Now all mixt or compound earths (except the
compositions of one and the same kinds, as clay with clay, or sand with
sand) are euer fast and binding earths: for betwixt sand and clay, or
clay & grauell, is such an affinitie, that when they be mixt together
the sand doth giue to the clay such hardnesse and drynesse, and the clay
to the sand such moisture and coldnesse, that being fixt together they
make one hard body, which through the warmth of the Sunne bindeth and
cleaueth together. But if it be so that the ignorance of the Husbandman
cannot either through the subtiltie of his eye sight, or the
obseruations gathered from his experience, distinguish of these soyles,
and the rather, sith many soyles are so indifferently mixt, and the
colour so very perfect, that euen skill it selfe may be deceiued: as
first to speake of what mixture some soyles consist, yet for as much as
it is sufficient for the Husbandman to know which is loose and which is
binding, hee shall onely when he is perplext with these differences, vse
this experiment, hee shall take a good lumpe of that earth whose
temperature hee would know, and working it with water and his wet
hands, like a peece of past, he shall then as it were make a cake
thereof, and laying it before an hot fire, there let it lye, till all
the moisture be dried & backt out of it, then taking it into your hands
and breaking it in peeces, if betweene your fingers it moulder and fall
into a small dust, then be assured it is a loose, simple, and
vncompounded earth, but if it breake hard and firme, like a stone, and
when you crumble it betweene your fingers it be rough, greetie, and
shining, then be assured it is a compounded fast-binding earth, and is
compounded of clay and sand, and if in the baking it doe turne red or
redish, it is compounded of a gray clay and red sand, but if it be
browne or blewish, then it is a blacke clay & white sand, but if when
you breake it you finde therein many small pibles, then the mixture is
clay and grauell. Now there be some mixt soyles, after they are thus
bak't, although they be hard and binding, yet they will not be so
exceeding hard and stone-like as other soyles will be, and that is where
the mixture is vnequall, as where the clay is more then the sand, or the
sand more then the clay.

When you haue by this experiment found out the nature of your earth, and