The Principles and Practice of Agricultural Analysis

Abstract

DR. WILEY'S treatise on agricultural analysis has long been the chief resource of every worker in that domain, because it contained not merely the particular method in vogue, but to a large degree all the methods that had been proposed or were in use in either American or Continental laboratories, very often in the words of the original. This did not make the book easy to use by the tyro, for Dr. Wiley rarely attempted any criticism or recommended one method beyond another, but the collection was extremely useful to the investigator, and saved him much labour in trying over things which had been tested before. The gain is particularly apparent in dealing with soils, the subject of the present volume, for the analysis of a soil is not like that of a manure, where there is a definite element or elements to be determined and a result in sight the correctness of which is only limited by the imperfections of the method. Instead, the methods are often conventional, depending upon such factors as the method of preparing the sample or the solvent employed, or they may be determinations like the absorptive power of the soil for water, which have no absolute meaning at all, but are merely attempts in the laboratory to get a number which shall represent the behaviour of the soil in the field. With regard to so maiy of these determinations of a physical nature the difficulty lies, not in carrying out the process, but in interpreting it afterwards, and correlating it with some practical aspect of the soil. The present volume of Dr. Wiley's book becomes, in consequence, something more than a collection of analytical methods; it is in many respects a treatise on soil chemistry and soil physics, so full are the introductory discussions dealing with each of the various means of investigating the soil, and as such it is indispensable to all serious students of agricultural chemistry. The Principles and Practice of Agricultural Analysis. By Dr. H. W. Wiley. Vol. i. Soils. Second edition, revised and enlarged. Pp. xii + 636. (Easton, Pa.: Chemical Publishing Co.; London: Williams and Norgate.) Price 18s. net.