THE NEW EARTH 



tribution of the bran of the ice-mills — the 

 coarser refuse of the great grindings of the 

 glacial days — appear the unfruitful soils, those 

 which contain less than their allotted one 

 billion, seven hundred million particles to the 

 gram, — soils that today are worthless as they 

 stand, but which the scientific agriculturists of 

 the future may yet bring under the plow, as 

 thousands of acres of barren soil, fertile by 

 nature but unproductive because of the lack 

 of moisture, are being reclaimed in the arid 

 regions of the West. 



But there is still another important avenue 

 from which to approach the soil of the New 

 Earth, — that which leads through the mys- 

 teries of agricultural chemistry. The physical 

 character of the soil, its material form and 

 composition, is of great importance, and the 

 immense labor already performed is probably 

 little more than a promise of what shall be 

 accomplished. It is the part of the agricultural 

 chemist of today to determine not only how 

 many and what kinds of particles are in a given 

 soil, but what the soil is composed of, whether 

 it is, or is not, by nature fitted for a certain 

 crop; what crop the farmer should substitute 



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