Examination of Soil Micro-organisms in their Natural Environment

Abstract

PEESENT information on the distribution and growth of micro-organisms in the soil has been obtained almost entirely by plating dilute soil suspensions on to nutrient media, the Rossi–Cholodny¹ buried slide technique, Jones and Mollison's² soil suspension preparations and similar indirect methods. Kubiena³ has developed methods of examining soil organisms in situ using reflected light, but his observations are necessarily confined to soil surfaces. So far as we are aware, the technique of preparing thin sections of soils and non-coherent rocks for microscopical examination by transmitted light has not previously been applied to the study of soil micro-organisms in their natural environment.