M.— AGRICULTURE 237 



a rainfall which is well distributed throughout all seasons of the year and 

 which varies from moderate to high. The soils of Britain had not been 

 studied even over the whole limited range of the country, but almost 

 entirely in a small region in the south-east and mainly at Rothamsted and 

 Woburn. These were looked upon as typical soils and all others were 

 supposed to be more or less similar. If that was not definitely stated, it 

 was tacitly assumed. It may be said that till the present century, and 

 even till the second decade of the present century, our view of soils was 

 narrow and insular. All others were expected to conform to ' This 

 blessed plot, this earth, this England,' and it was a most blessed plot of 

 the south-east of England which was the standard. Even in England 

 itself there are soils which differ very considerably in nature and com- 

 position from those of the Rothamsted and Woburn districts. I remember 

 my own state of doubt and confusion when, having been brought up in the 

 true faith as it existed in the nineties, I was transferred to the granitic 

 drift soils of Aberdeenshire and could not make them fit in with my 

 preconceived notions, and had to start to revise many of my beliefs, I was 

 therefore more prepared than some of my generation to open my eyes to 

 the new light which has poured in upon us during the past twenty-five 

 years from Russia, Hungary, Holland and Germany, and from America. 



We did ourselves no good service from an imperial point of view by 

 taking such a narrow and insular view of soils. While Britain is a small 

 country of limited latitude and climate the British Empire exists in every 

 latitude and every kind of climate. In agricultural science and not least 

 in soil science, great sections of the British Empire, not merely Canada, 

 but Australia and South Africa as well, came to look to the United States 

 rather than to Britain for information and guidance. 



Something of the same kind of constriction of vision is noticeable in 

 other countries. All are apt to judge by the conditions which prevail in 

 their own country and to look at others through their own spectacles. 

 This is of course natural. But there are two great countries which, 

 unlike Britian, extend through wide ranges of latitude and climate. These 

 are Russia and the United States. Russian territory extends from Arctic 

 tundra to the subtropical, and embraces every kind of climate from warm 

 humid and cold humid to arid and desert. The same is true of the 

 United States, especially if we include Canada, which, in this respect, is in 

 very close association with the t United States whose workers keep in view 

 the soils of the whole North American continent. Here, again, we have 

 a range of latitude from Arctic to subtropical, and of conditions varying 

 from the humid of the Atlantic and Pacific slopes to the arid conditions of 

 much of the interior. Both the humid and the arid climates vary greatly 

 in temperature conditions ranging from the Arctic to the subtropical. 

 In both these vast countries, as in little Britain itself, there are great 

 variations in Geological conditions, and in all three there are soils derived 

 from a great variety of rocks, igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary. 



The scientific work of the United States is published in English and is 

 therefore always easily accessible to us. The work of Hilgard and the 

 Californian School, and of Whitney, Schreiner and other soil investigators 

 of the United States Department of Agriculture, became known to us 



