REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 105 



on them any comprehensive scheme of investigations. This is na 

 longer the case. In a few States as much as half the area has been 

 mapped, and in many others from a fourth to a third has been 

 covered. Owing to the policy of the survey of distributing the work 

 rather uniformly over the whole area of the various States, even the 

 mapping of a fourth of the total area will enable an investigator or 

 a student of the maps to arrive at a close approximation to the dis- 

 tribution over the State of the main soil areas, such as the soil 

 series, at least. 



Until considerable areas had been covered wholly or in such a way 

 that approximate conclusions could be drawn as to the conditions 

 in such areas, our results could not come into general use. Not 

 only could they not be used for the reasons stated above, but they 

 were not even well known; not enough had been done to attract 

 attention. A certain amount of passive or active opposition, duft 

 in many cases merely to lack of familiarity with such work, its 

 methods, nomenclature, and results, manifested itself during the 

 early years of the bureau's activity. The time has come when the 

 work is forcing its way to recognition by its quantity, even if it be 

 not by its quality. The mere mass of the work already accomplished, 

 is making it evident that it has already gone so far that to recede ia 

 impossible. It is evident also that the general plan of the work can 

 not be profoundly changed, thereby causing those whose objections 

 to the work were based on its methods and its system of expressing 

 its results to realize that such objections must now be futile. There 

 is no such thing as an absolutely right way to do work of this char- 

 acter. There are various methods and various points of view. One 

 method or system must be adopted and one point of view must be 

 maintained if the results are to have any consistency or any value^ 

 It is not so important which system is adopted or what point of view 

 is maintained as it is to be consistent after some one system has been 

 adopted. 



The work of the soil survey is no longer new and unfamiliar. 

 Because of increasing familiarity with it investigators find less occa- 

 sion to criticize it or ignore it. By many, if not most, of the broadest 

 men in the agricultural colleges and experiment stations of the coun- 

 try the necessity of a soil survey on which to base investigations is 

 admitted without question. That the idea will spread still further 

 can no longer admit of a doubt. 



This increasing recognition and interest in soil survey work is 

 expressing itself in increasing requests for cooperation, made by State 

 organizations. We have been compelled to decline many such requests 

 solely because of lack of funds. Cooperation with a State organiza- 

 tion makes it necessary for us to do more work and spend, therefore, 

 more money in that State than might be done without cooperation* 



