and Southern India; and that the
soils, which are formed from its detritus, contain, in consequence,
less phosphoric acid, and is less adapted to the growth of that
numerous class of plants which cannot live without phosphates. The
volcanic rocks form a plateaux upon the sandstone, of almost all the
hills of Central and Southern India; and the soil, which is formed
from their detritus, is exceedingly fertile, when well combined, as
it commonly is, with the salts and double salts formed by the union
of the organic acids with the inorganic bases of alkalies, earths,
and oxides which have become soluble, and been brought to the surface
from below by capillary attraction. I may also mention, that the
basaltic plateaux upon the sandstone rocks of Central and Southern
India are often surmounted with a deposit, more or less deep, of
laterite, or indurated iron clay, the detritus of which tends to
promote fertility in the soil. I have never myself seen any other
deposit than this iron clay or _laterite_ above the basaltic
plateaux. I believe that this laterite is never found, in any part of
the Himmalaya chain. I have never seen it there, nor have I ever
heard of any one having seen it there. In Bundelkund and other parts
of Central and Southern India, the basaltic plateaux are sometimes
found deposing immediately upon beds of granite.

The doomuteea is of a light-brown colour, soon powders into fine
dust, and requires much more outlay in manure and labour than the
muteear. The oosur soil appears to be formed out of both, by a
superabundance of one or other of the salts or their bases, which are
brought to the surface from the beds below, and not carried off or
taken back into these beds. It is known that salts of ammonia are
injurious to plants, unless combined with organic acids, supplied to
the soil by decayed vegetable or animal matter. This matter is
necessary to combine with, and fix the ammonia in the soil, and give
it out to plants as they require it.

It is possible that nitrates may superabound in the soil from the
oxydizement of the nitrogen of a superfluity of ammonia. The people
say that all land may become _oosur_ from neglect; and when _oosur_
can never be made to bear crops, after it has been left long fallow,
till it has been flooded with rain-water for two or three seasons, by
means of artificial embankments, and then well watered, manured, and
ploughed. When well tilled in this way, all but the very worst