FOREWORD 



Many of the early books on farming were 

 written in a technical style. They smacked of the 

 lecture room and the library rather than of the 

 soil. They were scholarly rather than practical. 

 A spirit of directness and simplicity is be- 

 ginning to dominate agricultural literature. The 

 modern type of farm books is born of actual 

 contact with the soil and a desire to be of service 

 to the men who are getting a living from the soil. 

 They are democratic; they discuss common things 

 in a plain way. The long and tedious tables of 

 figures in the old books are giving place to crisp 

 summaries. The technical lecture-room phrases 

 are replaced by words in common use on farms. 

 The idea is not to present less science for nothing 

 is so practical as sound science but to present 

 science in a simple and practical way. This new 

 spirit is contemporaneous with the farmers' in- 

 stitute, the farmer's reading-course, Nature-study, 

 elementary agriculture in the public schools and 

 other efforts to serve the man who tills the soil. 

 It is an expression of a general movement which 

 aims to democracise agricultural teaching. 



This book is an attempt to set forth the impor- 

 tant facts about the soil in a plain and untechnical 

 manner. It is not a contribution to agricultural 

 science, but an interpretation of it a new presen- 

 tation of what is already known. 



S. W. FLETCHER. 

 Agricultural College, Michigan, 

 October 30, 1906. 



