SoIL ANALYSIS. 355 


Sor. ANALYSIS. 
The Board of Agriculture have been asked to give publicity 
to the following recommendations drawn up by a Com- 
mittee of the Agricultural Education Association * with 
the view of securing a certain uniformity in the con- 
duct of soil analysis. The object the Committee have in 
view in seeking for such uniformity is: (1) To enable 
analyses executed aud published by any investigator to be 
intelligible to his fellow workers, and, therefore, on occasion 
to be serviceable in their research ; (2) To ensure that the 
large number of soil analyses now being carried out at 
various institutions in this country shall be mutually com- 
parable and available for tabulation and general discussion ; 
(3) To put on record a method of procedure that will serve 
as a guide to investigators beginning such work. 
The Committee point out that these recommendations deal 
with those determinations about which there is a general 
consensus of opinion, such determinations, in fact, as would 
generally accompany a record of results of field experiments, 
etc. The Committee do not wish to formulate any recom- 
mendations as to the interpretation of soil analyses, recog- 
nising that the interpretation is still largely uncertain, and 
must depend to a great measure on the judgment and local 
knowledge of the analyst; and, further, their recommen- 
dations do not deal with analytical processes or details of 
manipulation to be adopted in the determination of any 
given constituent. These are matters dependent on the 
skill and discretion of the individual, and for them the 
individual is responsible. 
In these preliminary enquiries the Committee found that 
no agreement existed among chemists, either of this or 
ether countries, on such points as the preparation of the soi] 
for analysis, the nature of the solvent to be employed, the 
time of its action, etc., and as there is no absolute criterion 
‘by which they can be decided, they must be regarded as 
_ “The Agricultural Education Association is a body consisting of representatives of 
Collegiate and other institutions connected with agricultural education and research. 
Bos Ae #22 
