HOOL, 



UOS AftOKUBS, CfiLl. 



^ 

 CHAPTER I 



SOIL BUILDERS 



IB / O 2 



MANY people who till the soil, either as a 

 business or as a recreation, look upon it 

 merely as dirt cold, inert, lifeless, change- 

 less. I have met farmers in New England who took 

 it for granted that the land they till to-day is about 

 the same as it was two hundred years ago, when 

 their forefathers cleared it, except for being less fer- 

 tile. They had not noticed, or at least had not 

 interpreted, the soil-building and soil-changing 

 agencies at work all about them wearing away the 

 uplands, enriching the meadows, reducing the rocks, 

 filling the swamps ; changing from year to year the 

 contour of their farms and their agricultural value. 



THE WEATHERING OF ROCKS 



Every farm soil is a complex material and has 

 an interesting history. Most soils are a mixture 

 of ground rock, decayed plants and the remains of 

 insects and animals. Some soils, as the sands, are 

 almost entirely particles of rocks; others, as peat 

 and muck land, are made almost entirely of de- 

 cayed plants. Neither of these extremes makes a 

 a good farm soil, as a rule. The majority of the 

 soils in which plants are cultivated are made mostly 

 of ground rock, with the addition of a greater or 

 less amount of decayed plants. 



Rock has been, and is still being, ground by 

 weathering the action of air, rain, snow, frost, 



3 



