SOME SOILS OF THE SOUTHERN ISLAND OF 

 NEW ZEALAND WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE 

 TO THEIR LIME REQUIREMENTS. 



By LEONARD JOHN WILD, M.A., F.G.S. 



{Lecturer in Chemistry, Canterbury Agricultural College, Lincoln, N.Z.) 



1. The Method employed. 



A. Introduction. 



The work of which the following paper is a partial record, was 

 primarily undertaken with a view to testing the applicability to New 

 Zealand soil conditions of a method described by Hutchinson and 

 MacLennan^ for determining the lime requirements of soils. The 

 method consists essentially in treating a known weight of soil for three 

 or four hours with a known volume of a solution of bicarbonate of lime 

 of known concentration, and afterwards determining by titration with 

 standard acid the loss of hme suffered by the solution. This loss of 

 lime is deemed to be the lime requirement of the soil. Owing to the 

 scarcity and consequent high cost of labour in New Zealand, and owing 

 to the distance of lime deposits from most of our areas of arable soils, 

 chalking, marhng, or liming the soil in any other manner has never been 

 resorted to in this country on such an extensive and wholesale scale as 

 is frequently practised in Great Britain. Of late years, however, the 

 question of the necessity or otherwise of increasing the lime content of 

 our soils, has been keenly debated, and the need of some scientific 

 method of settling the question has become acute. Hence the writer 

 eagerly seized upon the method suggested which, on account of its own 

 inherent reasonableness, and the status of its sponsors, as well as because 

 of its rapidity and ease of manipulation, promised to be of the greatest 



^ "Studies on the Lime Requirements of Certain Soils," Journal of Agricultural 

 Science, Vol. vii. Part i (March, 1915), p. 75. 



