118 
and mentioned as constituting an "exhaustive investigation of many types of soils 
by very accurate methods of analysis." 
It is not the intention of the present writer to question the accuracy of the analyses, 
such as they arc, but it is notorious that there arc a great many methods that may, 
and have been, used for the chemical analysis of soils, each susceptible of great 
analytical accuracy, but in many, if not in most cases, having no practical bearing 
upon the agricultural value of the soils analyzed. The method of ultimate silicate 
analysis is one, and it is generally conceded that the results so obtained have but a 
very remote bearing upon the practical value of a soil. The method of extraction 
with distilled water is another; it is the opposite extreme and, unlike the silicate 
analysis, can certainly not be considered "exhaustive." 
Now, the criterion usually applied to the relevancy of soil analyses is whether they 
will stand the test of agricultural practice. Judged by this test, both the ultimate 
analysis and that by distilled water are equally failures, according to Whitney's own 
testimony. But his conclusion is that, since his method fails as a criterion of rich 
and poor soils, therefore the chemical composition of soils has no bearing upon crop 
production, and that therefore "the chief factor determining the yield is the physical 
condition of the soil under suitable climatic conditions." 
To this assertion "non sequitur" is the obvious first answer. But, before discuss- 
ing it, it seems proper to recall, as regards the personal standpoint of the present 
writer, that he was the first one to undertake systematic physical soil work in the 
United States, in the early sixties, and has steadily pursued it ever since, as his pub- 
lications''' show. He has always held, taught, and written that the physical soil 
conditions are the first thing needful to be considered in the estimate of a soil's prac- 
tical value, the chemical composition second, since faults in the latter can in most cases 
be much more readily remedied than faulty physical conditions. But that chemical 
composition is the chief determining factor of phytogeography in the humid region, 
and inferentially of crop production within the same, became his conviction in the 
prosecution of the agricultural survey of Mississippi, and hence he made it promi- 
nent in his work in that State. In the arid region, Avhere moisture is the dominant 
factor and soil composition much less varied, soil physics has received his chief atten- 
tion. It can not, therefore, be truthfully said that the writer has not fully recognized 
the enormous importance of physical soil conditions, both in his teachings and his 
publications. 
Eleven years ago it fell to his lot to controvert the hypothesis then put forth by 
Whitney to the effect that fertilizers act, not by conveying nourishment to plants, 
but by modifying the physical texture of the soil.& The recent enunciation of the 
Chief of the Bureau of Soils, while still maintaining the preferential claim for the 
physical properties of the soil, at least admits the importance of the functions of plant 
foods, but claims that fertilization is unnecessary because the supply will be "indefi- 
nitely maintained." He in fact takes us back to the times of Jethro Tull and the 
Louis Weedon system of culture, which also presupposed the indefinite duration 
of productiveness, but signally failed to realize it when the test of even as much as 
twelve years came to be applied. How can Whitney reconcile this predicted indefi- 
nite productiveness with the actual facts well known to every farmer, good and bad, 
who has ever taken fresh land into cultivation, and when pricing it is perfectly 
aware that, after a period ranging from three years on the long-leaf pine lands of 
Mississippi to thirty or more years in the black prairies, he must needs resort to fer- 
tilization if he wants a paying crop, while in the Yazoo clay lands and the alluvial 
soil of the Ilouma country hardly a diminution of production has occurred even yet? 
If, indeed, the soil solution is of the same composition in all these lands, then the 
common-sense conclusion is, obviously, that if the soil solution is the sole vehicle of 
plant nourishment it must be supplied more quickly and continuously in the "rich" 
than in the." poor" soils. Certainly, considering that both rich and poor soils are 
represented in the entire gamut of physical texture, it is impossible to conceive that 
such changes in texture as would be Drought about by poor cultivation should not 
occur in both. Yet the rich soils — those shown by the despised chemical analysis 
with strong acids to contain abundance of plant food — continue to produce abun- 
dantly, while the poor lands "give out." Hence, admitting for argument's sake 
that the soil solutions are really of the same chemical composition, it is clearly not 
the physical texture alone, or chiefly, that can account for these differences. 
« Proc. Amer. Assoc. Adv. Sci., 1872, 1873; Amer. Jour. Sci., 1872, 1873, 1879; Proc. 
Soc. Prom. Agr. Sci., 1882 to L898; Wollny's Forsch., 1879 to 1896; Centbl. Agr. 
Chem., L886; Agr. Sci., 1892: Jour. Amer. ('hem. Soc., 1894; U. S. Weather Bureau 
Bui. 3; Ann. Sci. Agron., 1892; California Station Reports and Bulletins, 1877 to 1902. 
&Agr. Sci., 1892, pp. 321, 566. 
