WHAT IS THE SOIL.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2218, 23 October 1907, Page 6 (Supplement)

WHAT IS THE SOIL.

“If you M-ero asked the name of tlio most important of mineral substances, you u-ould doubtless hesitate for a moment, and weigh the respective merits of coal, iron and tlic precious metals. Only after some consideration probably, would it occur to you,” says Mr. Henry Smith AA’illiams, “that these highly useful substances have insignificant value as compared u-itli that familiar mixture of giound-uii minerals, which wo call soil.

“Man could make shift to live, and even in a measure progress, without glass, cement, or metals; but liis very life- depends upon that little film of triturated rock that is spread over the surface of the globe in the form of earth. The constituents of this are metamorphosed into tlio substance of plants, and ultimately into the tissues of man himself.

“Properly to understand tho matter, •however, it must be comprehended that the soil is no important part of tlio earth’s structure, except from a strictly human standpoint. At best it is only a little film of material frayed off from the jacket called the earth’s crust. To a giant of such size that tho earth were to him what an apple is to us, the soil would be no more than the bloom on tlio peach. AA’ith his liaiikercliief lio could M’ipo off the films of water that we call oceans, like so much dew; and polish off the soil as we rub the bloom from an apple, -clear down to the rock foundations, -without changing appreciably the size or weight of Ids toy. To scrape away the entire crust' of the earth (so far as it known to us) would be but to remove an infinitesimal shell; and the total bulk of air and oceans aggregates only 7 per cent of tlio slielfT Yet the oceans cover three-fifths of the earth’s surface, and, as measured in human terms, are some miles in depth. Hoiv, then, shall wo estimate tlie insign’floanco of that little jioM-dering of soil, only a few feet in thickness, that is dusted over tlie remaining two-fifths of the earth’s crust.”