14 BULLETIN 108, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
men. The soils submitted were garden and greenhouse soils, on 
which the owners had experienced some difficulty in producing vege- 
tables or flowers. Often the soils had grown good crops, were inten- 
sively cultivated and heavily manured, and later failed. In tins 
respect the conditions were similar to those on the Mount Vernon 
soil. This soil had been used for growing flowers and garden plants 
for a long period of years, had been intensively cultivated and heavily 
manured for a long time, had failed to show further response to 
manure, had been declining in productivity, and had been shown to 
contain salicylic aldehyde in the investigations reported. It seemed 
profitable therefore to include soils in this examination which in some 
degree had a similar history. 
In addition to this adventitious examination of soil samples a 
similar survey was made with soils collected in the open field by the 
field men of this bureau under instructions furnished them. Accord- 
ingly, samples of field soils were collected from various parts of the 
United States. A productive sample and an unproductive sample of 
the same soil type, either from the same field or at least in the same 
vicinity, were sent in for investigation. The history of the soils as to 
crops grown, fertilization, drainage, etc., were secured as far as 
available. 
The results of this examination for the occurrence of aldehyde 
compounds in soils include good and poor samples from many parts 
of the United States, comprising acid, neutral, and alkaline soils, 
soils of different cropping, different texture, origin, drainage condi- 
tions, climatic conditions, etc. The results of the examination of 
these soils will now be given. 
A total of 74 soils are described in the two following tables. Of 
these 14 are garden and greenhouse soils which had failed to grow 
good crops and 60 are field soils under general farming conditions. 
Of these 60, 30 were productive soils and 30 unproductive. In this 
connection attention should again be called to the fact that the field 
samples were collected in pairs, one good and the other poor, of the 
same soil type and from the same field or locality, so that statements 
concerning productivity pertain to the relation existing between the 
samples of the same type. 
These soils were all subjected to the method described for obtaining 
aldehyde compounds from soils and the material thus obtained tested 
with the reagents mentioned. Five of the garden soils and twelve of 
the field soils gave an appreciable amount of aldehyde compounds 
when thus extracted, and this material gave positive reactions with 
the fuchsine reagent and with the ferric chloride. These soils are 
briefly described in Table IX, together with the results obtained when 
the material was tested in the manner described with seedling wheat. 
