A Quarter Century in Soil Fertility Research and a Glimpse into the Future

THE SOIL FERTILITY DIVISION is broader and more diversified in scope than any other in our Society. For that reason, we must take a little time to define our field. The first book on this subject, which many of us studied thoroughly, was Sir John Russell's book "Soil Conditions and Plant Growth." In his preface to that book, Sir John defines the field as he saw it in 1910 as follows: "I have endeavoured in the following pages to give a concise account of our present knowledge of the soil as a medium for plant life. At first sight the subject appears very simple; in reality it is highly complex and trenches on several different subjects with which no one individual can claim to have any adequate knowledge, and, what is perhaps a greater disadvantage, it has grown up very unsystematically. Chemists, botanists, bacteriologists, geologists, and agriculturalists have all contributed something, but usually in connection with their own special problems and not with the idea of developing a new subject. It has usually been reckoned part of the somewhat vague mixture known as agricultural chemistry, and has often been considered more suitable for farmers' lectures than for pursuit for its own sake. "As a result of its history the subject is now in a rather confused state. Suggestions thrown out by men eminent in some other branch of science have been accepted without much serious examination; illustrations used in farmers' lectures to drive home some important point to an audience before whom lucidity is above all things necessary, have acquired the force of established facts; whilst statements, and sometimes even substances, have come to be believed in for no better reason than that people have talked a great deal about them. "In recent years, however, its recognition as a basis of national wealth has given the soil a high degree of techni-