Abstract
THE book under notice constitutes the third of the series of reports on the work of the Division of Soils, which is engaged in mapping the distribution and describing the agricultural characteristics of the various soil types met with in selected areas of the United States. The general scope of this remarkable undertaking has already been discussed in these columns when reviewing the Report of 1900. (NATURE, November 6, 1902); the present volume shows that the work of the Division has so far been appreciated by Congress that its progress has been assisted by increased appropriations, enabling it to enlarge its working staff and cover a greater area in its annual survey. The reports now presented deal with the most diversified types of land, and speak of the variety in the conditions under which farming is carried out in the United States. On the one hand, we read of intensive systems of agriculture, analogous to our own, as in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, old settled districts in touch with large centres of population, farming high, and either purchasing fertilisers or keeping stock to make manure; then we pass, as a contrast, to parts of Virginia and Georgia, which were ruined by the war and left without capital or energy, where it is still the custom to crop out the soil by continuously growing corn or wheat, and then clear a fresh farm, leaving the old land to fall back to scrub until it accumulates sufficient decayed vegetable matter to be worth breaking up again.
U. S. Department of Agriculture. Field Operations of the Bureau of Soils, 1901.
Third Report. Pp. 647 + case containing thirty-one maps. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1902.)
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H., A. U. S. Department of Agriculture Field Operations of the Bureau of Soils, 1901 . Nature 67, 485 (1903). https://doi.org/10.1038/067485a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/067485a0