of Crops | 5.89 | 10.49 | 12.35
-----------------------------------+-----------+--------+------------

It will be seen from the above that air alone exercised nearly as much
solvent effect as the mixture of air with one-fourth its weight of
carbonic acid; this is doubtless, in part due to the fact that the air,
upon entering the soil rich in humus, caused the abundant formation of
carbonic acid, as will be presently shown must have been the case. It
is, however, probable that organic acids (crenic and apocrenic,) and
nitric acid were also produced (by oxidation,) and shared with carbonic
the work of solution.

It is almost certain, that the acids of peat exert a powerful
decomposing, and ultimately solvent effect on the minerals of the soil;
but on this point we have no precise information, and must therefore be
content merely to present the probability. This is sustained by the fact
that the crenic, apocrenic and humic acids, though often partly
uncombined, are never wholly so, but usually occur united in part to
various bases, viz.: lime, magnesia, ammonia, potash, alumina and oxide
of iron.

The crenic and apocrenic acids (that are formed by the oxidation of
ulmic and humic acids,) have such decided acid characters,--crenic acid
especially, which has a strongly sour taste--that we cannot well doubt
their dissolving action.

IV.--_The influence of peat on the temperature_ of light soils dressed
with it may often be of considerable practical importance. A light dry
soil is subject to great variations of temperature, and rapidly follows
the changes of the atmosphere from cold to hot, and from hot to cold. In
the summer noon a sandy soil becomes so warm as to be hardly endurable
to the feel, and again it is on such soils that the earliest frosts take
effect. If a soil thus subject to extremes of temperature have a dressing
of peat, it will on the one hand not become so warm in the hot day, and
on the other hand it will not cool so rapidly, nor so much in the night;
its temperature will be rendered more uniform, and on the whole, more
conducive to the welfare of vegetation. This regulative effect on
temperature is partly due to the stores of water held by peat. In a hot
day this water is constantly evaporating, and this, as all know, is a
cooling process. At night the peat absorbs vapor of water from the air,
and condenses it within its pores, this condensation is again accompanied
with the