Corn Groivers' Association. 193 



lack of sanitary conditions, so we can abuse our soils and make 

 them run down and fail to produce as they should through lack 

 of attention, through lack of knowledge, through lack of appre- 

 ciation or through lack of energy, and we have ourselves to 

 blame, either through our ignorance or through our incapacity, 

 when we talk of abandoned soils and impoverished land. 



It would be a matter of the utmost interest to me if I had 

 the time to tell you of some of the advances that we are making in 

 the investigations of soils. Up to within twenty-five or thirty 

 years ago, I think, we knew a great deal more about the composi- 

 tion of the sun than we did about the composition of the soil of 

 our own earth. We certainly knew more about the laws of the 

 heavenly bodies than we did about the laws of agriculture, and it 

 is not surprising, for all human knowledge has begun by a study 

 of the far-off, the vague. It comes in in recent years with more ma- 

 ture thought, with more intelligent action, and we now look at 

 things close by; and one of the latest subjects attacked by science 

 is the soil upon which we walk, and still further back than that 

 is a subject of equal importance that we know still less about 

 than we do of the soil, that is common to us all, and that is ivater. 



COLOR IN SOIL. 



We know almost nothing about the properties of water, and that 

 is a subject which is going to be attacked by scientific methods now 

 before long, as the soil has been attacked within recent years. 

 It is one of the most fascinating subjects of today; of course, 

 it is of great interest to me, as I have pushed myself along in it, 

 and I find that whenever I get a chance to talk about the subject 

 of the soil, the advances that have been made, the knowledge that 

 we have acquired always appeals to anyone who is at all interested 

 in agriculture; but time will not permit the discussion of it this 

 morning, except just briefly to bring up the important points of 

 the soil survey. One of the things that science is attacking is 

 that the color of the soil is to some extent indicative of its fer- 

 tility and crop adaptation. It is a very simple thing. We see here 

 a red soil and a red subsoil, and next to it a black soil and a black 

 subsoil, and in another field a yellow soil and in another a white 

 soil. We know that they are different, that they are adapted to 

 different crops. We know that if we put the same crop on each 

 of these soils that the plants will function differently; they will 

 grow better on some of them than they will on the others. Now, 



A— 13 



