234 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



metals when used cannot be replaced. They can be exhausted, as has 

 already happened with coal seams, oil-fields and iron ore deposits, but 

 there are soils which have been used for thousands of years, some of them 

 probably since man first passed from the food gathering and hunting stage 

 and began cultivation, yet they are still fertile. Of course by neglect or 

 wasteful treatment, such as has taken place both in ancient and modern 

 times, a soil can be lowered in fertility and value and become what is called 

 exhausted, but this is a very different use of the word ' exhausted ' from 

 its application to an oil-field or a coal seam. The exhausted soil can by 

 skilful treatment, or even by being left alone for a time, be brought back 

 to fertility, but the oil or coal once used is irreplaceable. 



The soil is the source of most of our food, of our clothing, and, directly 

 or indirectly, of most of our possessions. Its products are the most 

 important materials of commerce and industry. Even with all the 

 increased powers of production of the last century which have released so 

 many from essential work like soil cultivation, and enabled them to live 

 by the production of articles of luxury, — or without doing anything of use 

 or service for the community at all — nevertheless, from a world point 

 of view, soil cultivation remains overwhelmingly the most important of 

 industries, and many of the other important industries depend directly 

 upon its products or are engaged in producing articles for the use of the 

 husbandman. It is as true in Blackpool to-day as it was in the Garden of 

 Eden, that man is ' made of the dust of the ground.' It is necessary in a 

 community like ours, where we are apt, among towns and factories, to lose 

 sight of the soil, that we should be reminded from time to time that man is 

 dependent on the soil, and that all flesh is grass ; that land is not merely 

 a playground for the city dweller, it is the fundamental producer, and the 

 tiller of the soil is more necessary to the community than the cinema 

 operator or even than the coal miner. 



There has been a great advance during the present century in our 

 knowledge of soils and in our views of their nature and structure. So also 

 our views on manures and on the fertilisation of the soil, and on the whole 

 meaning of fertility, have been widened, while on the manufacturing and 

 commercial side something amounting almost to a revolution has taken 

 place in the fertiliser industry. 



The soil, owing to its primary importance, has naturally been a subject 

 of interest and thought since the earliest times — Greek philosophers and 

 Latin poets have formed their theories about it, and written of the art of 

 cultivation. A great mass of lore about it and its cultivation has been 

 built up by many generations of peasants and farmers and some of my 

 predecessors have already dealt with this subject. In particular the first 

 President of the Section, Sir Thomas Middleton, in his address in 1912 

 dealt with ' Early Associations for Promoting Agriculture and Improving 

 the Improvers.' With his great knowledge of the early history of Agri- 

 culture and of early writers on the subject, his address is a mine of informa- 

 tion on the building up of agricultural knowledge before the days of the 

 modern scientific period, when definite search after knowledge, and 

 experiment to increase knowledge, began to replace the slow and uncertain 

 processes of gathering knowledge by practical experience, handed down 



