MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
55 
THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF SOIL MANAGEMENT. 
FRANK Iv. CAMERON. 
The watchword of modern industrial efforts is efficiency. Efficiency 
implies control; control of materials and control of methods. Control 
in turn implies knowledge and understanding of materials and methods. 
We are met here today in symposium to study the problem of effi- 
ciency in soil management. It is meet that this should be so, for this 
is the place where labored for many years a Nestor among soil in- 
vestigators; the scientific public and especially those more immediately 
concerned witli the soil and soil problems have long looked with admira- 
tion and for inspiration to the labors of the late Professor Kedzie. 
The time is propitious, for we are now entering an era of scientific dis- 
cussion following one marred by acrimonies because a theory has been 
brought into question — a theory which for three-quarters of a century 
and upwards dominated the thoughts of soil investigators practically 
to the exclusion of all others. Useful as was this theory and satisfactory 
for its time, it is now giving way to, or perhaps it would be better to 
say, being modified by, increasing knowledge and new points of view. 
The word symposium is, in its derivation, suggestive of drinking together, 
a simile quite apt to this occasion, for the program we have followed 
today shows that to attain a comprehensive purview of the soil, we 
must now draw from the founts of many sciences. The work of the 
physicists, the chemists, the biologists and the geologists is obviously 
necessary to a knowledge and understanding of soils. Looking further 
into the larger aspects of the case and the relation of the soil to human 
progress and welfare, it seems evident that there is no branch of knowl- 
edge but what lends itself to or finds itself called upon in soil investi- 
gations. 
Finally, the soil itself is a subject which is not surpassed in interest 
by any other. It present's to the scientist many complexities, some- 
times baffling, but ever interesting, always suggestive of new lines of 
thought and of original experimentation. To the practical layman it 
offers, in soil management, a subject rapidly becoming a highly de- 
veloped art, passing from the avocation of an artisan to the profession of 
a highly trained expert. Upon the soil more than upon any one thing de- 
pends the material prosperity and happiness of the race, and equally 
important is its part in determining the development of the spiritu- 
ality of the race. However facinatiug the soil may be to the scientific 
man, and however strong the justification in studying it for its own 
sake or simply to add to the sum total of human knowledge, and how- 
ever interesting in its relations to the {esthetic and emotional develop- 
ment of the race — and these views of the subject are well worth con- 
sidering in an institution of learning — today we are to think of it from 
another point of view. The labors of our colleagues, who are working 
upon the soil as chemists, physicists, biologists, geologists, etc., are 
