Abstract
THE island of Hawaii is the largest of the group of Sandwich Islands, which were formally annexed to the United States in 1898. It is mountainous and volcanic, and the soil is highly productive; sugar and pineapples are the staple industries, but coffee, honey, hides, sisal, bananas, rice, wool; cotton, and rubber are also exported. As usual with American possessions, a strong agricultural experiment station has been developed; in this particular case the work was done under the auspices of the Sugar Planters' Association. The director, Dr. H. P. Agee, and the staff have carried out some excellent investigations on the problems connected with the local agriculture. The latest publication is by the chemist, Mr. P. S. Burgess, and deals with the soils of the island. These are of special interest because they are of volcanic origin, and are situated in a different climatic zone from our own, so that they differ in many respects from the ordinary soils of Great Britain or America, especially in their large content of oxides of iron and aluminium, and their small content of silica. Thus the average of a number of analyses is:—
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R., E. The Soils of Hawaii. Nature 100, 95 (1917). https://doi.org/10.1038/100095b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/100095b0