SOILS 



CHAPTER I 

 THE SOIL MAKERS 



Do not think, gentle reader, that I am going to weary 

 you with a long discussion about {lie history of the 

 ground. The only misgivings the author has had in the 

 preparation of this volume has been the necessity of say- 

 ing these few words that follow about the soil makers, 

 the agencies that have been at work making the soil. 

 Important? Yes, in a way; but if you see the matter 

 as I do, you are more interested in having the soil dem- 

 onstrate what it can do now, rather than to inquire into its 

 line of descent; to be familiar with its ability to do work 

 and to perform to-day, rather than to know its ancestral 

 life of long years ago. 



First effort in soil making. To find the first effort 

 in soil making we shall have to go back to a time far into 

 the past ; back before man had appeared ; farther back 

 yet than the time when plants had begun their existence. 

 For is it not true that plants must have raiment for their 

 roots earth in which they may grow and out of which 

 they may get food and drink? 



\Ve shall have to go back very far back in the past 

 when the surface was cooling and forming its crust, 

 when the entire surface of the earth was rock no ani- 

 mals, no cultivated crops, no trees, no grass not even 

 the tiniest form of bug or plant or beast. 



For at this time the earth was void and without form, 



