328 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1957 



in dire poverty, the mainly agricultural populations; but whereas 

 yields in all industrialized countries have increased markedly within 

 the last 50 years and are still increasing, they have not increased in 

 India and China. In both countries, however, the present govern- 

 ments are aware of the importance of industrialization and getting 

 people off the land as a means of raising the standard of living, which 

 would lead to some improvement in soil fertility. 



The different stages of soil evolution under Man are not, of course, 

 distinct. They merge into one another, as do the corresponding stages 

 of social evolution, and it is quite possible for all three (or more) 

 stages to be apparent in one country at the same time — as, for exam- 

 ple, in modern Ceylon, where shifting cultivation, soil-exhausting 

 subsistence agriculture, and soil-conserving commercial agriculture 

 are operating simultaneously. Western Europe is the only large 

 area of the world that is at the climax of soil evolution ; much of the 

 rest is so young in human history that it is still in the soil-exhausting 

 stage, a fact which affords an adequate ecological reason for the pres- 

 ent worldwide prevalence of soil erosion. The soil-exhausting stage 

 will pass, and one factor which is accelerating its passing is the widely 

 felt fear that it may not pass. 



A glance at the past and present histories of Man in different 

 parts of the world will show that they all conform to the same general 

 pattern in relation to the soil. 



ENGLAND 



The history of England affords an excellent illustration of the way 

 in which soils have evolved under human society from their original 

 forest-made condition of quite low fertility to their present man- 

 made condition of very high fertility. Parallel with this soil evolu- 

 tion occurred a social evolution from a tribal to a feudal to a highly 

 industrialized capitalistic society. In these parallel evolutions the 

 outstanding influence on soil fertility was the growth of towns. 



The first people to clear the English primeval forest were probably 

 shifting cultivators. Then, gradually, an invariable system of settled 

 agriculture developed, of which the most essential feature was the 

 resting fallow. This "three-field system" was a characteristic of the 

 feudal age. The land was worked according to a fixed set of rules, 

 to prevent the otherwise rapid exhaustion of the land and the break- 

 down of the community. The rules not only checked soil exhaustion, 

 but also prevented soil improvement. 



The fallow, however, did not completely prevent soil exhaustion, 

 and by the time the feudal period was coming to an end many of the 

 open fields were getting into a bad state with increasing weediness 

 and falling yields. As is well known, the early commerce of this 



