38 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. — SECTION II. 



amongst the series of soils so grouped, and resulting partly from, 

 geological origin and partly from the dominant agencies that 

 operated in the formation of the soils. Time fails for explaining 

 how the work of a soil survey party is carried out in the field, but 

 anyone interested will find a brief account on pages 21-22 of my 

 Annual Report for 1906 as Senior Government Analyst of the 

 Cape Colony. 



Working upon the principles just outlined, the United States 

 Bureau of Soils has divided the Union into fourteen soil provinces : 

 these are further divided into 86 soil series, and these again sub- 

 divided into 715 soil types, each type covering on an average 

 about 130,000 acres of the ground that had been surveyed up to 

 the beginning of last year. 



And if the American Union has regarded as so necessary this 

 work of soil classification, must it not be at least as needful for 

 the South African Union ? Rather let me ask, is it not much 

 more necessary in our case ? For America may have at her disposal 

 resources other than agriculture ; with us it is — or should be — 

 paramount as a staple industry. To us, too, should apply the words 

 of the President of the Association of Official Agricultural Chemists 

 of the United States when addressing that Association's i6th 

 Annual Convention in 1899 : 



" The soil is very literally the bottom fact of all agricultural processes, 

 and it is to the soil we have given our chief attention ; its chemical com- 

 position and physical properties, the quality and availability of the plant 

 food in the soil." 



Professor Hilgard. Director of the Agricultural Experiment 

 Station of California, in his classic treatise on " Soils." published 

 in 1906, says of soil investigation that 



" it is not easy to imagine a subject of higher direct importance to the physical 

 welfare of mankind, whose very existence depends on the yearly returns 

 drawn by cultural labour from the soil." 



If these views are correct — and it is my conviction that they 

 are — has not the time arrived for this important subject to be 

 tackled in right earnest in our own South Africa instead of con- 

 tinuing merely to be toyed with ? Again I say, we cannot afford 

 to ignore what the American people think it worth while to treat 

 so seriously, and we may quite fitly apply to ourselves the closing 

 words of an address delivered by Professor C. G. Hopkins to the 

 American Society of Agronomy at New York fourteen months ago. 

 He said : — 



" Permanent agriculture is the only structure upon which the future 

 prosperity of the American nation can be secured, and the absolutely essential 

 foundation of permanent agriculture is the fertility of the soil." 



How applicable to ourselves ! Especially in this birth-year of 

 the new South African nation ! Chemical science will have many 

 important functions to perform on behalf of this young nation, 

 but the need for understanding more fully the physics and chemistry 

 of our South African soils must stand foremost. Therefore I have 

 spoken to you on a subject whose urgency has ever been prominent 

 before me these many years past. Of course I could not deal with 

 the science of the soil in all its aspects ; the chemistry of plant 



