GEOLOGY IN RURAL WELFARE 
283 
GEOLOGY IN RURAL WELFARE ^ 
Professor John E. Smith 
Iowa State College, Ames 
When that pioneer of pioneers among agricultural geologists, 
Hilgard, published the ‘‘Geology and Agriculture of Mississippi,” 
in 1860, little did he think that so much time would elapse before 
the science of geology would be recognized and used as the founda¬ 
tion upon which so many kinds of rural progress would be made. 
That it should serve an immediate need was undoubtedly held by 
Wm. K. Kedzie, nearly half a century ago, 1877, when he 
published the “Elements of Agricultural Geology for the Schools 
of Kansas.” 
Efforts to make earth science immediately adaptable to Agricul¬ 
ture were expressed in “Rocks, Rock-weathering and Soils,” by 
G. P. Merrill, in 1897; in “Agricultural Geology,” by J. E. Marr, 
in 1903, and in publications by several others in the British Isles 
about the same time; and finally in “Soils,” by E. W. Hilgard, in 
1906. 
As may be suspected most of these early efforts were all marked 
by strong emphasis placed on the origin of soils, which feature is 
now considered to be only one out a dozen or more important 
phases of the subject. Woodward, in “Geology of Soils and the 
Substrata,” 1912, and Rastall, in “Agricultural Geology,” 1916, 
broke away from the idea that “soils” alone is the only avenue of 
relation between geology and agricultural and Emerson, in “Agri¬ 
cultural Geology,” 1920, placed special “emphasis on soils and 
mineral fertilizers.” 
At the present time our subject treats of geolog}' in its larger 
1 Paper read before the Iowa Academy of Sciences, Iowa City Meeting. 
