Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
between his sources and his own observations due to different climate and natural
conditions.
Coler talks about the suitability of land for grain and vines, referring to Colu-
mella and Virgil, and he recounts the entire list of soil quality tests already known
in Antiquity: smell, digging of a hole and re
lling it, mixing soil with water to test
its stickiness, and taste by
ltering a suspension. Clover and the existence of strong
trees are Coler
s vegetation indicators. As to color, he suggests to differentiate:
Although color has been dismissed by authorities (he quotes Palladius, the most
popular work from Antiquity), black color does indicate a fertile soil, unless it is
boggy. A boggy soil is cold and tenacious, but the addition of horse-dung can
improve it.
70
The entire topic seven is devoted to the cultivation of
'
elds. There he gives
several remedies for
rmly in
Galenic humoral pathology derived from the four-quality concept. But a growing
variety of refuse from proto-industrial operations, workshops of button- and
combmakers, tanners, spinners of wool, and soap boilers was added to the reper-
toire of soil amendments over time. To give but one example, in Coler
elds of a
'
bad complexion
'
, as he puts it, rooting him
'
s 7th topic,
the 29th chapter is devoted to the treatment of cold and wet
elds. Marl, horse
dung,
ne sand, pulverized limestone, quicklime, saw mill waste, and coal-dust as
found on places where charcoal piles are made, added and plowed under, make the
eld mellow and fat (geil). Workshops, waters, forests, meadows, waste- and other
marginal lands were connected by way of animal excreta and the animal
s draft
power with the arable, whose sustained fertility was the prime concern. All agri-
culture was adapted to speci
'
sh
and shells added marine resources to the repertoire where the situation allowed and/
or demanded.
Experts from the Netherlands travelled through late medieval and early modern
Europe whenever large drainage works were planned, such as in the Oderbruch,
near Berlin, to turn large marshes into fertile soils for peasants. The inhabitants of
the Netherlands had learned to drain peats by the 11th century and had created
fertile soils for agriculture. Crisscrossing the landscape with drainage ditches and
draining peats with their high amount of organic matter had unintended side-effects.
With waterlogging ceased, the organic parts of the soil would oxidize and miner-
alize and consequentially, shrink. Sinking peat bogs in a
c circumstances: fertilizers such as seaweed, small
at country close to the sea
meant a growing danger of inundation, and dykes had to be built. As the land
surface sank further below the level of the sea, needing constant pumping to stay
useful, poldered landscapes with their drainage fuelled by the wind and later, fossil
energy resulted. A second, very important use of peats was as fuel for a region with
few woodlands (and those now cut down) and a growing economy with more and
more urban population. This meant a new demand on soils. As everywhere in
Europe, urban populations disconnected the nutrient
ows which had in the agri-
cultural countryside remained fairly tightly knit. Human excrement was often lost to
70
Coler (
1591
).
