6 The Value of Soil Analyses to the Farmer. 



which the crop has been successfully grown, and in many- 

 such cases can warn him off an unprofitable venture. In 

 doing this he is, however, as we said before, only giving 

 precision to the opinions of a practical man, who, for example, 

 after walking about on the land, digging a hole and feeling the 

 soil, would readily express an opinion whether it were fit for 

 fruit growing or potatoes. Sound as the judgment due to long 

 experience generally is, it may be vitiated by some accidental 

 circumstance. I have known a field reported as unfit to carry 

 fruit merely because it was examined after a spell of wet 

 weather and the drains were out of order. A mechanical 

 analysis revealed the fact that the actual soil was little more 

 than a strong loam of excellent texture for fruit if only the 

 drainage was set right. At the time it was examined it was 

 soaking wet because it was waterlogged, not because it was 

 naturally heavy. 



Before mechanical analysis can be made to yield its 

 maximum of information a large number of analyses must be 

 accumulated of soils whose behaviour is known under the 

 various conditions of climate prevailing in the United Kingdom. 

 With more experience of this kind investigators in different 

 districts will then be able to work out correlations between 

 mechanical analysis and the special features which mark the 

 working of certain soils ; for example, why some soils run and 

 pan so badly, why others should be cultivated but not ploughed 

 in the spring, why the corn on yet others lodges so easily. 

 Fortunately a considerable mass of data are being put together ; 

 Dr. Russell and I have dealt with some 150 soils in Kent, 

 Surrey, and Sussex ; Dr. Luxmoore and Professor Percival 

 reported on a number of soils in Dorset ; while other syste- 

 matic surveys are in course of publication for Shropshire and 

 Norfolk, and are being carried out in other counties, so that 

 in a very few years we shall possess this fundamental 

 comparative basis for the soils of England. 



We cannot, however, entirely dispense with chemical 

 analysis ; at times it reveals certain facts of very great impor- 

 tance to the productivity of the land. First of all a chemical 

 analysis will indicate whether the land is properly supplied 

 with carbonate of lime, and whether it is neutral or acid. The 

 importance of lime and chalk was thoroughly realised by the 

 early farmers of Great Britain, but for the last half century 

 their application has been neglected and in many parts of the 

 country the occupiers of the land are living upon and exhaust- 

 ing the capital which their predecessors put into the soil. It 

 is not merely compounds containing lime, like bones or super- 

 phosphate, that are necessary, but quicklime or carbonate of 

 lime that will provide a base to neutralise the acids which are 



