s
of rosin, gum, wax, honey, oil, and other vegetable productions. See
Botanic Garden, Part I. Cant. IV. line 25, note. It has however other uses
in the system, besides that of a nourishing material, as it dilutes our
fluids, and lubricates our solids; and on all these accounts a daily supply
of it is required.

2. River-water is in general purer than spring-water; as the neutral salts
washed down from the earth decompose each other, except perhaps the marine
salt; and the earths, with which spring-water frequently abounds, is
precipitated; yet it is not improbable, that the calcareous earth dissolved
in the water of many springs may contribute to our nourishment, as the
water from springs, which contain earth, is said to conduce to enrich those
lands, which are flooded with it, more than river water.

3. Many arguments seem to shew, that calcareous earth contributes to the
nourishment of animals and vegetables. First because calcareous earth
constitutes a considerable part of them, and must therefore either be
received from without, or formed by them, or both, as milk, when taken as
food by a lactescent woman, is decomposed in the stomach by the process of
digestion, and again in part converted into milk by the pectoral glands.
Secondly, because from the analogy of all organic life, whatever has
composed a part of a vegetable or animal may again after its chemical
solution become a part of another vegetable or animal, such is the general
transmigration of matter. And thirdly, because the great use of lime in
agriculture on almost all kinds of soil and situation cannot be
satisfactorily explained from its chemical properties alone. Though these
may also in certain soils and situations have considerable effect.

The chemical uses of lime in agriculture may be, 1. from its destroying in
a short time the cohesion of dead vegetable fibres, and thus reducing them
to earth, which otherwise is effected by a slow process either by the
consumption of insects or by a gradual putrefaction. Thus I am informed
that a mixture of lime with oak bark, after the tanner has extracted from
it whatever is soluble in water, will in two or three months reduce it to a
fine black earth, which, if only laid in heaps, would require as many years
to effect by its own spontaneous fermentation or putrefaction. This effect
of lime must be particularly advantageous to newly inclosed commons when
first broken up.

Secondly, lime for many months cont