788 Museum of Economic Geology, [^No. 118. 



8. The importance of the department of agriculture in the Economic 

 ^ Geology of the North-Western Provinces is so 



Arrangements of ^*^ 



the department of great, that we can scarcely be too anxious to in- 

 gucu uie. ^^^^ .^^ effective illustration and development. 



Under it may be included investigations of the geological rela- 

 tions, the chemical composition, and the capabilities of different soils, 

 of the influence exerted upon these by waters of irrigation, natural and 

 artificial, and of the nature and effects of the application of varieties of 

 mineral manure. To illustrate the geological relations of the soils of 

 these provinces, specimens of the rocks that may be found to underlie 

 them, and from which their mineral constituents may have been 

 derived, ought to be procured for the Museum. There are of course 

 many localities, as the great alluvial districts, and the valleys of Uie 

 great rivers of India, the soils of which can be referred to no particu- 

 lar derivative rocks, but which have been derived from many sources, 

 yet where such rocks do occur, a most intimate relation necessarily 

 subsists between them and the soils to which their disintegration, 

 by natural causes, has given origin. It is this relation which gives 

 so much of their value to the geological maps of districts, and render 

 them of so much utility to the scientific agriculturist. From those 

 localities, therefore, in which particular kinds of soils may be observed, 

 specimens of the soil itself, of the underlying rock or stratum, and 

 also of the sub-soil, or portion intervening between the soil and rock, 

 and exhibiting the gradual transition from the one to the other, ought 

 to be forwarded to the Museum, and there systematically arranged. 

 As in the previous department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, 

 so in this, materials would so accumulate in process of time, as to make 

 it possible to construct a map, exhibiting the distribution of soils in the 

 North-Western Provinces, a work at once interesting and useful. Since 

 the staple vegetable products of this country are common to it, and to 

 many distant parts of the earth's surface, it would be of the highest 

 interest and importance, to be enabled to compare the soils sustaining 

 them here, with those from which they may there be produced. 

 Hence these specimens of such soils from tracts producing articles 

 similar to our own, ought to be obtained to as great an extent as may 

 be practicable. The analysis of these might be expected to yield us 

 information as to the peculiar principles on which their adaptation to 



