CHEMICAL REPORT.



be in the air or water which penetrate the soil. Within proper
limits, therefore, this ingredient of soils is very valuable, and the
farmers of England especially, habitually apply it to their culti-
vated soils.
  The old-field soil, No. 2434, from the same locality as these
two calcareous soils, is remarkable for containing much smaller
proportions of carbonate of lime and of the other essential in-
gredients than those, although it contains more than average
quantities. It differs from them greatly also in its 83.3 I per cent.
of sand and insoluble silicates, and in containing no calcareous
fossils or rock fragments, seeming to show that, although on the
same farm, it may be located on a different geological sub-
stratum or bed.
  The two Spencer county soils, soil and subsoil, from a very
old field located on the upper Hudson river beds, yet retain
full average proportions of the essential elements, organic mat-
ters, or humus, excepted. The surface soil contains more than
average sand and silicates and phosphoric acid, less than average
proportions of organic matters and potash, and about averages
of alumina, lime, and magnesia. The subsoil contains more
than average proportions of alumina, etc., phosphoric acid and
potash, less than average of organic matters and sand and sili-
cates, and about average lime and magnesia. Its proportion of
potash is much above the average, and in both organic matters
are quite deficient.
  More than twenty years ago the late Prof. Liebig, then as
now an ii authority " on agricultural chemistry, promulgated his
opinion, based, as we believe, on imperfect data, that the chemi-
cal analysis of soils is of no practical value. At once all the
authors at second-hand took up the cry, and to this day copyists
and others who have no taste for this kind of investigation, or
who had not been trained to appreciate the value of its indica-
tions, while in accordance with the progress of agricultural
chemistry they are obliged to attach great importance to the
presence or absence of certain elements of fertility in soils, still
keep up an inconsistent opposition to this mode of interrogating
nature in aid of agriculture. One principal argument used by
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