A True Recipe

dead serves today as a medicine that is called Mummy. I ask you: Have you seen certain farmers who, when they want to sow a field for two successive years, burn the stubble or straw of the remainder of the wheat that has been cut? + And in the ash of said straw will be found the salt that the straw had drawn from the earth, which salt, remaining in the field, will assist the earth once again. And thus, the straw being burned inside the field, it will serve as just as much manure, because it will leave behind the same substance that it had drawn from the earth. It is time that I put an end to this topic: for if you do not wish to believe the above reasons, it would be great folly to give you other examples. However, because our topic has been from the beginning to show you that the rains carry away the salt from manures that are in the open, I will give you, to conclude my topic, an example that will suffice for the whole. Pay attention to the time of sowing, and you will see that the farmers will bring their manure to the fields some time before sowing the earth. They will put this manure in heaps or piles + in the field, and some time later, they will come to spread it throughout the field. But in the place where the said pile of manure will have rested for some time, they will leave nothing of the said manure, but will throw it here and there. But in the place where the said manure will have rested for some time, you will see that after the wheat that has been sown is tall, it will be in that spot thicker, taller, greener, and more vigorous than in the other places. From that, you can easily recognize that it is not the manure that has caused this, for the farmer throws it elsewhere: but it is that when the said manure was in the field in piles, the rains that occurred passed through the said piles of manure and descended through the manure to the earth. And in passing, they dissolved and carried away certain parts of the salt that was in the said manure. Just as you see that the waters that pass through saltpeter-bearing lands carry the saltpeter with them, and after the waters have passed through said lands, the said lands can no longer serve to make saltpeter, for the waters that have passed have carried away all the salt: it is the same with