SECTION IX.
Of Fallow Earth.
These Terms of Fallows, or Earth that lies at Rest and Unimploy'd, intimate, that the Grounds sometimes want Rest, thereby to be recover'd or reinforc'd, whether the Influences of the Stars, and more particularly the Rains, cause that useful Reparation (as certainly they contribute much to it) or rather whether those Earths have in themselves a fund of Natural Fruitfulness with a Faculty not indeed to render that Fruitfulness undrainable, but to re-establish it, and produce it again; when, after having been impair'd by conti∣nual Productions, we let it lie Fallow for some time, as if we did abandon it to its own Discretion, and judg'd it capable of knowing its own Distemper, and to remedy it. Thus Philosophers impute to the Air an Elastic Force, and to use a more sensible Example. Thus Water has in it self a kind of Natural Coolness with a Principle of re-establishing, and reproducing that Coolness, when after its having been heated by Fire, or by the Sun, it is remov'd out of their Reach: Heat is certainly a stranger to it, and, as it were, an Enemy; so that it keeps this Water in a violent Motion; But when 'tis remov'd from that which caus'd and maintain'd that Heat, and thereby left at Rest, it destroys that which render'd it defective, and by degrees becomes cool again as before; that is, it reco∣vers the perfection, which is natural to its Being and Temper.
Thus good Earth being Impair'd by the Nourishing of some Plants that were Strangers to it, and drain'd it at once of all its ancient Salt, and even of all the new, as fast as it re∣pair'd it; if we discharge or ease it of those Plants, and leave it for a while without re∣quiring any thing from it, that is Fallow or at Rest, it will easily return to its natural Fertility, especially if instead of planting it with little ordinary Plants, we mix a little good Dung with it, insomuch that the Straw that shall Rot, or be Burnt among it, will afford it new strength. *
Nature shows us in this a true Circulation, which we will Explain hereafter in the Chapter of Amendments.
