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Show SOILS DEVELOP THRU EVOLUTION process: . ! Controversy as to whether heredity j or environment is most powerful in-molding in-molding the lives of. human beings may continue unabated,. but Dr. A. G. McCall, chief of the soil investigations i unit of the United States Depart.nent j of Agriculture, recently told members of the Agricultural Historical Society 1 that studies by scientists of the Bui'-' eau of Chemistry and Soils and by the ; Russians with whom soil science orig- j inated clearly indicate that environment environ-ment is the all-important -factor in j developing the characteristiesof soils I and in determining whether they shall be good or bad, fertile or unproduc-1 tive. Doctor McCall pointed out that the chief sturriblingback to' our knowledge of soils and to the development of soil science has been the - persistent assumption as-sumption by scientists that soils were chiefly the product of heredity. "Until very recent years," he said, "students of soil science have believed that soils must necessarily retain the properties and qualities which they inherit from the rocks and gcaligicul formations from which they are derived, de-rived, but such is not the case, for soils, like human beings, cannot es-. cape the inexorable process of evolution, evolu-tion, and, like animals and plants, they pass from youth to maturity and on to old age." In this process, says Doctor McCall, they lose their early characteristics, inherited from the particular geological geologi-cal formations of the earth's crust from which they are formed, and are influenced to a constantly greater ex- tent by the climate and vegetation As proof of the dominating effect of t-avir- nment on the :eve!y'rii rt of soil characteristics he ri'ci II e f.-ii't that a soil derived from granite in New Jersey would develop into 1 a wholly different soil as regards color, texture, and fertility than one developed devel-oped from the same kind of granite in Georgia. "In the light of progressive scientific scienti-fic discoveries we find it impossible to believe that the 'death' of a soil i-necessarily i-necessarily anything more than a stage of coma or suspended animation," anima-tion," says Doctor McCall. "Soil surveys sur-veys are studies of the relationships of soil environment in which their evolution has occurred. Our faith in science is so profound that we believe in the possibility of resuscitating pv--n ' a dead soil and who knows but th::t in : the near furture we mnv be able to treat dead soils and ;tart t'.em on a brand-new evolutionary course from youth to old age ?" The Bureau of Chemistry and Soils, in which Doctor McTall directs the soil investigations unit, has differentiated differen-tiated more than a thou and types of soil in the process of mapping and ile-cribirig the agricultural lands of 1.200 counties in the United Stales. In the -oil survey reports the various -oil- are de.-rribed in detail, their origin ori-gin is trared, and their present agri--ultnral value js emphasized. |