Address before the Association of American Geologists, 263° 
ing their nature we find, as we might expect, that distinguished 
ehemists differ somewhat in their conclusions. Berzelius in- 
cludes all the organic matter of soils under the term humus. In 
this he supposes that he finds crenic, apocrenic, and humic acids, 
with extract of humus and humin. This was his’ view of the 
subject, if I understood it, in 1840; and it does not differ from 
his views seven years before, except in substituting recently the 
term humic acid for geine, and humin for carbonaceous mould. 
In this country, Dr. 8S. L. Dana employs the term geine in two 
senses. When he speaks agriculturally, he means by it “all 
the decomposed organic matter of the soil,” which he divides 
into the soluble and insoluble; and in this sense he regards cre- 
nic and apocrenic acids, humin and extract of humin, as forms of 
geine. When he speaks chemically, he regards geine as a distinct 
compound, the same in composition as the substance denominated 
geine by Berzelius in 1833, and humic acid in 1840 ; although 
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tinct compound, and that it is essentially composed of crenic and 
terest. Iam too well acquainted with the gentlemen who have 
adopted different views on these subjects, not to believe that they 
will thankfully accept of light from any quarter, and consider it 
an honor, rather than a disgrace, to give up opinions which’ exper- 
iment or sound argument shows to be untenable: For they well 
know, that in a progressive science, like agricultural. chemistry 
the honor of original discovery belongs to him who makes an ad- 
Vance upon his predecessors ; nor can it pluck the laurel from his 
brow, although others aided by his labors, should subsequently go 
beyond him. In the present case it may be thought, that rules 
for the analysis of soils, founded upon different views of the char- 
acter of their organic matter, must be useless. But I must ex- 
press the opinion, that the agricultural value of analyses, conduct- 
ed according to these conflicting views, cannot be very different ; 
and in a scientific respect, in the present. state of agricultural 
istry, analyses performed in different 1 must be an im- 
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