A REAL SURVEYWhile this so-called soil survey has been going on now for nearly thirty years, costing, exclusive of the printing, approximately five million dollars, another real survey and mapping has been made by the geological survey. Numerous contour maps, showing the altitude and physical characteristics of the soil, have been published. Now the geological survey has introduced aerial photography as a salient feature of the work. They do not simply look at the fields from a Ford car. They show them as they are. "The War Department cooperates with the geological survey in this useful work. Each photographic unit has an enlisted pilot and photographer and airplane. As to the area covered, the phenomenal extent of the Soil Bureau sinks into insignificance. One detachment in 1926 photographed 9,000 square miles. Another this year has assigned to it 8,000 square miles. Another unit has been assigned 4,000 square miles in Illinois and will then begin photographic work in Michigan and Wisconsin." (Science, August 19, 1927, page 165.) There is a growing feeling that the whole system of soil survey is a gigantic caricature of applied science;.in other words, it is simply "bunk." This feeling was a general one at the very beginning of the activities of the Bureau of Soils. It was not confined solely to the Soil Survey, but to the theories put out by the Bureau of Soils. Their famous Bulletin No. 22 was vigorously assailed by the leading agricultural chemists of this country. Among these there was none of greater eminence than Professor Hilgard of the University of California. Dr. Hilgard says (Science, New Series, Vol. 18, No. 467, Dec. 11th, 1903, page 755): "Now the criterion usually applied to the relevancy of soil analyses is whether they will stand the test of agricultural practice. Judged by this test, both the ultimate analysis and that by distilled water are, equally, failures, according to Whitney's own testimony. But his conclusion is that since his method fails as a criterion of rich and poor soils, therefore the chemical composition of soils has no bearing upon the crop production; and that, therefore, the chief factor determining the yield is 'the physical condition of the soil under suitable conditions.' "To this assertion 'non sequitur!' is the obvious flrst answer. * * * "The recent enunciation of the Chief of the Bureau of Soils, while still maintaining the preferential claim for the physical properties of the soil, at least admits the importance of the functions of plant food; but claims that fertilization is unnecessary because the supply would be 'indefinitely maintained.' He in fact takes us back to the times of Jethro Tull and the Louis Weedon system of culture, which also presupposed the indefinite duration of productiveness; but signally failed to realize it when the test of even as much as twelve years came to be applied. "In the foregoing discussion, only the salient points of the bulletin in question have been taken up, and their most obvious weaknesses briefly considered. To do more would involve the writing of a paper as long as the bulletin itself; and it is to be hoped that the matter will be taken up by others, also. Thus, for instance, Rothamsted Station might have something to say regarding the singular interpretation here put upon the splendid work of Lawes and Gilbert. "In conclusion, it seems to the writer that the verdict upon the main theses put forward so confidently in this paper must be an emphatic 'Not proven!'" Dr. A. D. Hall published in Nature, November 9 1903, an article entitled "A New Theory of the Soil. I quote the following: "Though Dr. Whitney's main argument is thus hardly tenable on his own showing, certain side issues are worth a little notice. Dealing with the action of fertilizers, he notices that, while the wheat crop on the best fertilized plot at Rothamsted averages about 33 bushels, on the plot which has been unmanured for sixty years it has fallen to 12 or 13 bushels. Yet on the similarly unmanured plot in the Agdell field, where the wheat is grown once every four years in rotation with roots, barley and clover or fallow, but little falling off is apparent. Hence he concludes that, in virtue of the rotation, the fertility of the Agdell field is unimpaired, whereas in the continuous wheat field 'the decrease can be ascribed only to some physical change in the soil, to some chemical change other than the actual loss of plant food taken up by the crops.' But when any other crop on the unmanured plots in Agdell field is considered, the decline in fertility is enormous; roots and clover only yield minimum crops; so far as they are concerned the cultivation of the soil involved in the rotation has been quite unable to maintain the fertility. The wheat, with its powerful root system, holds up better, but its production is falling steadily; it Is important to see how long it will be maintained, though it need never be expected to fall to the level of the continuous wheat, because the land is practically only cropped every other year. "Suggestive as Dr. Whitney's memoir must be to all agricultural chemists, we thus do not consider that the main theory it propounds possesses any permanent value. We should be sorry if we have failed to appreciate the argument properly, but it, is not always easy to follow, the text being somewhat deficient in sequence and orderly arrangement; indeed, we are disposed to think that had the question been set out a little more nakedly at the outset, and the demonstration marshalled with more precision, a somewhat different conclusion would have been reached by the authors." This array of soil chemical talent was joined by Professor Hopkins of the University of Illinois, who published a serious attack upon the theories and practices of the Bureau of Soils. Professor Snyder of the Experiment Station of Minnesota joined in this assault. The chemists of Cornell University also lent their aid to combating these theories. No one of the unscientific theories of the Bureau of Soils was ever approved by the Association of Official Agricultural Chemists of the United States. These theories of soil fertility were all built upon the sand and have long since passed away. Our young chemists, who are not acquainted with all these facts, would find it interesting to review the literature to which I have just alluded. Professor Hilgard was constrained to ask the following questions: "Is freedom of research restricted in the Department as respects soils, and is everybody in the Department required to believe in the theory of the Bureau of Soils or to express no opinion whatever in any official capacity? Is the right to use the soil for research purposes abridged in the Ddpartment of Agriculture, and if so, to what extent? Are the theories of the Bureau of Soils accepted by reputable authorities in this and other countries?" The first and second questions he answered in the affirmative. The third question he answers strongly in the negative.
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