Dear Sir: Among the many useful directions and hints for the improvement of soils, which I find in four volumes of your Magazine, I see nothing that fully answers my purpose, and not having the time to seek and read other works, take the liberty to ask your advice.

It is desired to raise in a garden containing flowers and vegetables; a very limited variety of the latter, however. The land has been under cultivation two years, having previously been mowing land. It was quite "springy," which has been remedied by deep draining. Little manure of any kind has been used - but trenching and frequent digging has been adopted - and last autumn some ten loads of fine sand were mixed with, say one-quarter of an acre of the soil, which yet remains clayey, coarse, and cakes badly on the surface after rain. The following is the result of an analysis of equal weights of loam and subsoil mixed, that being about the proportion of each in the* part which I have broken up - the loam being, say a foot in depth, and the ground dug a foot deeper than that - the sub-soil turned up and mixed.

One hundred parts, (dried and mixed as above.) yield I presume you will remark here a deficiency of alkalis and phosphates.

Will you oblige me with your advice as to the proper substances to bo used to supply the lacking ingredients, and at the same time render the earth more friable; for after all, my plants grow pretty well if the soil is stirred as often as it is watered, but the seeds push through the surface crust with an effort that is painful to witness.

My pea patch, (sowed just before the late heavy storm,) has the baked and cracked appearance of a dried bed of mortar. In making your suggestions, will you be so good as to remember that articles which may be obtained of the dry salters are much more accessible to me than wood ashes, peat, etc, which every farmer in the country can easily obtain, but which are less abundant here than guano. Very respect-fully yours, E. R. Boston, April 28,1851.

We answer in brief - burn a portion of the enrich and loosen the soil - as burned clay never coheres again. Then ridge up the soil before winter, digging into it a good dressing of fresh stable manure. For the process of burning clay, see Horticultural vol. ii. p. 442, and vol. iii. p. 184. Ed.