The Third International Congress of Soil Science

Abstract

SOME four hundred delegates, from twenty-five foreign and twenty British countries, will assemble at Oxford for the Third International Congress of Soil Science on July 30-August 7. The delegates will be welcomed by the Vice-Chancellor of the University at the opening session, and will be entertained by the Government at a dinner in Christ Church Hall on July 31. The meetings have been arranged so that questions of wide interest will be discussed in the mornings at plenary sessions, and more specialised ones in the afternoons at Commission sessions. Sir John Russell will deliver the presidential address on “The Place of Soil Science in Agriculture”, and Prof. G. W. Robinson will present a general survey of British soils. The plenary session of Commission IV—Soil Fertilityâ promises to be of particular interest. Prof. E. A. Mitscherlich will describe the co-operative work developed and organised by him in Germany to test his physiological methods of determining fertility, Prof. R. A. Fisher will outline the principles of his well-known methods of field experimentation as used in England, and Prof. O. de Vries will describe fertility measurements in the tropics with special reference to work in the Netherlands Indies. Other papers likely to attract attention are by Prof. F. Hardy on tropical soil types, by Dr. Briine on the cultivation of moorland, and by Prof. Lowdermilk on the measures now being adopted in the United States for the control of soil erosion. The programme covers the whole field of pure and applied soil science, and includes a number of excursions of both scientific and scenic interest in the neighbourhood of Oxford.