CHEMICAL REPORT.



age of the government. Individual efforts are inadequate to
effect it; nor could they, if adequate, so economically conduct
it. The writer believes that the geological survey of any
region should always include this study of the soils; yet very
little has been done in this direction in all the recent State
surveys, and a valuable opportunity has been lost, which in
many instances cannot recur, of studying the chemical con-
ditions of the virgin soil of various parts of our country.
  Chemists are naturally somewhat averse to soil analysis; it
requires so much time and labor, so much care must be taken
to secure accuracy, and there is so little variety in the work,
and so small an appreciation of its value and significance
amongst the people when done, that they gladly avoid it.
But, in the course of time, most of them who are not too
much prejudiced against the teachings of experience, arrive
at the same conclusion with Prof. Aug. Voelcker, of the Eng-
lish Royal Agricultural College: "There was a time when I
thought with many other young chemists, that soil analyses
would do every thing for the farmer; three or four years of
further experience and hard study rather inclined me to side
with those men who consider that they are of no practical
utility whatever; and now, after eighteen years of continued
occupation with chemico-agricultural pursuits, and, I trust,
with more matured judgment, I have come to the conclusion
that there is hardly any subject so full of practical interest
to the farmer as that of the chemistry of soils. The longer
and more minutely soil investigations are carried on by com-
petent men, the greater, I am convinced, will be their practical
utility."-Jour. of Roy. Agr. Soc. of Eng., i865.
  Even Prof. S. W. Johnson, whose somewhat harsh criticism,
in 186I, of some of the former labors in this field of the writer,
seemed to sound the key-note of the clamor against this kind
of study in this country, has so far yielded his opposition as to
give us in his valuable work, "lHow Crops Feed," 1870, the
comparative analyses of several soils, and to point out the sig-
nificance of their chemical composition. But he is careful to
caution the reader, page 368, that although the analysis may
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