ANNUAL MEETING OHIO STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 69 



often possible to get a very good idea of the character of the underlying material 

 "by means of road cuts and ditches. If such are not available it may be neces- 

 sary to make deeper borings by means of extensions to the regular soil auger. 



WHAT is THE SOIL? 



In undertaking such a survey it is well to remember that the soil is not 

 simply broken-down rock. This degenerated rock must have been acted up- 

 on by life in some form or other; must contain some organic matter -before it 

 can be considered as a true soil. It is not mere dead, inert matter. It is full 

 of life and various changes are constantly taking place. It is an independent 

 natural body, a bio-geological formation, differing essentially from the rocks 

 which underlie it, although closely related to them. It is the one great forma- 

 tion in which the organic and inorganic kingdoms meet and derives its distinctive 

 . character from this union. 



THE FACTORS UPON WHICH CLASSIFICATION is BASED. 



Since the soil survey is necessarily conducted in the field, the classification, 

 which is made, must be based upon those factors, or obvious differences, which 

 are there detectable, although the field examination should be followed up with 

 laboratory studies to determine other factors or properties which cannot be de- 

 cided upon in the field. We will, therefore, review rather briefly some of the 

 factors or characteristics which we must consider in making a field classifica- 

 tion or separation of the soil; or in other words, in determining whether the soil 

 on your farm is like that on your neighbor's farm. In fact, the soil surveyor 

 uses many of the same evidences of differences in soils that the farmers do. 

 His more careful training, however, enables 'him to detect differences more 

 quickly and interpret their meaning more accurately. 



One of the most important of these factors is that of origin. In this 

 term are included not only the kind of rock from which the soil is derived, 

 together wth the agencies or processes which were concerned in the forma- 

 tion of this rock, but also the various processes of weathering that change 

 the underlying formation from mere rock into actual, cultivatable soil. All 

 of you, especially those who are from the western half of the State, know 

 that the black soils are found in low places where swampy conditions for- 

 merly existed. The underlying material .is exactly the same on the higher 

 areas where the lighter-colored soils occur, the black color being due to an 

 accumulation of organic mater under poor drainage conditions. Such dif- 

 ference are often of greater importance than those due to variations in the 

 character of the underlying rock, and this is one of the principal reasons why 

 a soil map and a geological map are not the same. Let me see if I can bring 

 out a_ little more clearly just exactly what I mean. 



When I was a boy I took part in the debates which were held in connec- 

 tion with our country school. I recall that one of the most heated discussions 

 we ever had was upon the subject whether man is more the product of heredity 

 or environment, and some of us at least thought that we had the question settled 

 for all time; but it bobs up again every little while, so we must have been mis- 

 taken. To apply this to soil, I would say, that the differences due to the influ- 

 ence of the rock represent heredity, while those brought about by the processes 

 of weathering correspond to environment. We can no more determine the char- 

 acter of a soil from a study of the rocks alone than we can that of a man from 

 a study of his ancestors. 



