falls after the dry season
is over, and washes out of the upper surface a portion of the salts,
which have thus been brought up from below and accumulated, and
either takes them off in floods or carries them down again to the
beds below. Some of these salts, or their bases, may become
superabundant, and render the lands oosur or unfit for ordinary
tillage. There may be a superabundance of those which are not
required, or cannot be taken up by the plants, actually on the
surface, or there may be a superabundance of the whole, from the
plants and rain-water being insufficient to take away such as require
to be removed. These salts are here, as elsewhere, of great variety;
nitrates of ammonia, which, combining with the inorganic substances--
magnesia, lime, soda, potash, alumina, and oxide of iron--form double
salts, and become soluble in water, and fit food for plants. Or there
may be a deficiency of vegetable mould (humus) or manure to supply,
with the aid of carbonic acid, air, water, and ammonia, the organic
acids required to adapt the inorganic substances to the use of
plants.

[* Rain-water contains small quantities of carbonic acid, ammonia,
atmospheric air, and vegetable or animal matter.]

All are, in due proportion, more or less conducive to the growth and
perfection of the plants, which men and animals require from the
soil: some plants require more of the one, and some more of another;
and some find a superabundance of what they need, where others find a
deficiency, or none at all. The muteear seems to differ from the
doomuteea soil, in containing a greater portion of those elements
which constitute what are called good clay soils. The inorganic
portions of these elements--silicates, carbonates, sulphates,
phosphates, and chlorides of lime, potash, magnesia, alumina, soda,
oxides of iron and manganese--it derives from the detritus of the
granite, gneiss, mica, and chlorite slate, limestone and sandstone
rocks, in which the Himmalaya chain of mountains so much abounds; and
the organic elements--humates, almates, geates, apoerenates, and
crenates--it derives from the mould, formed from the decay of animal
and vegetable matter. It is more hydroscopic, or capable of absorbing
and retaining moisture, and fixing ammonia than the doomuteea. It is
of a darker colour, and forms more into clods to retain moisture. I
may here mention that the Himmalaya chain does not abound in volcanic
rocks, like the chains of Central