BOOKS AND CURRENT LITERATURE 273 



ping, and, incidentally, on all methods devised for that purpose to date. 

 I cannot see how such methods can serve us in scientific work at all, 

 and, from the practical standpoint, it would surely seem that guides for 

 the purchasers of land could be arranged more cheaply and less elabor- 

 ately than by the soil mapping methods extant. This statement has 

 particular reference to the subdivision of types very minutely, such as, 

 for example, sandy silty clay, clay loam adobe, etc. Such minute clas- 

 sification and subdivision in view of the present state of our knowledge 

 of soils, is analogous, in my opinion, to carrying figures out to four deci- 

 mal places when it is known that the accuracy of the method makes it 

 impossible for them to be correct beyond the first decimal place. In 

 support of this seemingly radical conclusion, the reader will find much 

 of interest in the recent studies of this laboratory on variability in soils, 

 which have already appeared in this same series." 2 



With the ideas expressed by Lipman the reviewer is in full accord. 

 Some experience in the attempted use of the Soil Survey maps both in 

 scientific investigation and in practical land valuation has resulted in 

 the conviction that the soil maps are so dependent upon academically 

 rigid criteria of classification as to be of little practical use and are insuf- 

 ficiently precise and thorough for scientific purposes. From the greater 

 emphasis placed in recent years on the making of the more general 

 "reconnaissance surveys," one suspects that the officials of the Bureau 

 of Soils have realized this situation. These reconnaissance surveys 

 seem to the reviewer much more useful practically than the detailed 

 surveys and they are presumably far less expensive per acre. The 

 entire abandonment of the detailed survey as now conducted might not 

 be an important loss, especially if the funds and energy thus released 

 could be devoted to a renewal of fundamental investigations of soil 

 science like those for which Whitney and the Bureau of Soils were once 

 so viciously attacked and are now so generally honored. The reviewer 

 suspects, with Professor Lipman, that refinement of methods of soil 

 surveying and absorption in the attempt to perfect detail have ob- 

 scured a little the real, or at least the original, objects of the effort. 

 There is an ancient Chinese tale of one Fu Wang who desired to see the 

 Emperor. Knowing that on a certain day the Son of Heaven would 

 pass through a walled street adjoining his garden the industrious Fu 



2 Or the studies referred to by Prof. Lipman, two are known to the reviewer: 

 Waynick, D., Univ. Calif. Pubs, in Agr. Sci. 3: 243-270 (1918) ; Waynick, D., and 

 Sharp, L. T., Ibid. 4: 121-129 (1919). 





