CHEMICAL REPORT.



show the amount of the mineral fertilizers in a soil, it cannot
tell how much of them "1 is at the disposal of the present crop;"
and on page 271: "These facts show how very far chemical
analysis, in its present state, is from being able to say defi-
nitely what any given soil can supply to crops, although we owe
nearly all our precise know/edge of vegetablc nutrition directly or
indirectly to this art."
  He might very truly have added, that we should not be able
to say that a suitable chemical composition of a soil was not
the only condition necessary to its fertility, unless we had
thoroughly studied that condition. It is only by means of
chemical analyses that we find out the equally indispensable
nature of the physical conditions. He cannot fail to admit
that it is impossible to make progress in our knowledge of
the soil and its actions and conditions without a thorough
study of its chemical characters.
  In accordance with this outcry against this sort of investi-
gation the difficulties of obtaining good samples for analyses
has been exaggerated. In a country like that of most of this
State, where there is comparatively but little quarternary or
transported material constituting'the soil, and especially before
its character has been much altered by a dense population,
there is little difficulty, with the use of necessary precautions,
in obtaining representative samples of large areas similar in
character and position. In many large districts in our State
the soil has been formed in place by the disintegration of the
rocks. In other parts, where surface action has been greater,
more judgment and care must be exerted in the collection of
the soils; but in no part of the State, probably, is so great
local variety to be seen in the soils as frequently may be
observed in the northeastern States, where the transporting
action of water and of ice, in former epochs, has produced a
high degree of local irregularity in the nature of the surface
deposits.
  In the collection of the samples of our Kentucky soils the
causes of local and accidental differences of composition were,
as much as possible, avoided.
                                                            143



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