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 the top, to an angle of about 65°, with the handle; and an instrument of the same form, but having three prongs instead of being solid. This latter is more useful when, as frequently happens in vineyards, the soil is stoney.

The effects of manure, have been generally stated in a former chapter. It is, however, necessary, that soils, long under the same cultivation, should have their exhausted principles in some degree renewed; besides, the too luxuriant vegetation, which results from the employment of fresh and undecomposed manures, they frequently impart to the fruit, and still more to the wine, a disagreeable taste. By repeated and careful analyses of wines, produced by vineyards which were manured with seaweed, pure muriate of soda was detected in them.

The principles of substances, employed as manure, being thus imbibed by the fruit, and developed in the wine, it is necessary that none containing injurious principles should be employed. In the best vineyards, when an amendment is given, it consists only of vegetable earth; and this, if it can be procured, should always be mixed with any dung that may be employed. Vegetable substances, such as mosses, leaves, &c. when decomposed, form an excellent amendment; as also, alluvial matter, deposited by rivers, lakes, &c, and