Clark University

The New Soil ScienceSource: Economic Geography, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Jan., 1928)Published by: Clark UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/140812 .

Accessed: 09/05/2014 01:22

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Clark University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Economic Geography.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Fri, 9 May 2014 01:22:19 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

THE NEW SOIL SCIENCE Wd yITH an ev.rgrowing interest in the wise utilization and

reasonable conservation of all resources, the American people are turning slowly but surely to sound scientific

method, away from the haphazard misnamed " practical " policy of the past. In agriculture, trade, manufacturing, medicine and health, education, in fact in every phase of human activity, the "scientific method" is being adopted, not always discreetly, not always with intelligent direction, but generally, with success.

In no field of research has greater progress been made than in the study of soils. The Bureau of Soils in the United States Depart- ment of Agriculture has led the way in America, and is now forging to the very forefront in the research carried on in all parts of the world; but for many years the Europeans, led by such men as Ramann, Glinka, Frosterus, and Murgoci have been the pioneers. Perhaps in no country has such an extensive program of soil study been carried out as in Russia, while the United States has mapped intensively probably the largest area.

The development of soil science in America has been dominated until in recent years by the controversy between the school of which Cyril G. Hopkins of the University of Illinois was the chief protag- onist and to which the chemical composition of the soil was signifi- cant, and the school led by Milton Whitney of the United States Bureau of Soils to which the physical and textual characteristics of the soils were most important. Happily their opposing views have been reconciled in the recent developments of the science, so that progress goes on apace.

Every student of agricultural geography particularly, and every student of economic geography and agriculture as well, owes it to himself to become familiar with the results of the latest researches into soils as distinct phenomena, with their own characteristics of development through an orderly cycle or succession of forms as distinctive and definite as that of vegetation or land form, and the effect of these successional stages upon the utilization of the soil.

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Fri, 9 May 2014 01:22:19 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions