Hints to househunters and householders / by Ernest Turner.

  • Turner, Ernest.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hints to househunters and householders / by Ernest Turner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CHAPTER IV. SOIL. Ground-air—Digging up carbonic acid—Movement of ground-air—Poisonous soils—Poisoned soils—Geological survey map—Our neighbours’ nuisances—The moral of it—Ground-water—Damp soil—The phthisical theory—A doubtful advantage—Amateur drainage—Absorption of heat—Herbage—Radiation of heat—Healthy soils—Un- healthy soils—Made soils. “The earth hath bubbles, as the water hath.” Real air-bubbles, and many of them. Loose sand often contains from 20 to 40 per cent, of air; and the surface soil we dig up in our gardens is simply gorged with it. It is a point to be borne in mind too, in connection with the popular but erroneous idea of the extreme deadliness of carbonic acid, that this air which we thus, when “ gardening,” set free from the soil, and the breathing of which is universally allowed to be so excellent for the health, is abnormally “rich” in that particular constituent. And not only is the earth under our feet full of air, but that air is in continual motion, which varies considerably; the agencies governing its