Eugene W. Hilgard
Eugene Woldemar Hilgard (January 5, 1833 – January 8, 1916) was a German-born, American chemist, geologist, professor of agricultural chemistry, and pedologist. Sometimes called the "father of modern soil science in the United States", he was elected in 1872 to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
Quotes
[edit]- ... we are still able to secure specimens of by far the greater portion of the United States, that even the plow has never yet touched, and where manure, outside of the flower and vegetable garden, is an unknown quantity. We can find on these soils their original vegetation, which is so largely used by the settler as a means of diagnosing the actual productiveness of the land he proposes to clear, and of prognosing its durability. The value of this method is so emphatically recognized as to have given rise to the remark, by a distinguished member of this body, that he "would rather trust an old farmer to tell him about the value of a soil, than the best chemist alive."
Now, we may perhaps agree with Professor Johnson in this matter ...- (1881) . "Article XXXI.—The objects and interpretation of soil analyses.". American Journal of Science 3 (129): 183–197. (quote from p. 184)
- … having camped in the Yellowstone valley on a convenient elevation above the sodden ground, I was put to precipitate flight by an army of large ants issuing from beneath my rubber mattress. Daylight observation revealed to me the counterparts of the Louisiana mounds, only as a rule less thickly grouped than on the Louisiana prairies; and on excavating some of these mounds which had been deserted by their aggressive inhabitants, I noted precisely the same structureless earth I had seen in the Opelousas prairie, only this time traversed by half-obliterated burrows, which in the Louisiana mound-fields were almost wholly imperceptible, or at least undistinguishable from old root-tracks.
It therefore seems to me that the question of the Louisiana mounds resolves itself into a biological problem, viz., what kind of ant might have built up these elevations, and what causes might have operated to depopulate them.
- One characteristic of the flood-plain lands of all the larger rivers, and more or less of all streams subject to periodic overflows, is that the land immediately adjoining the banks is both higher and more sandy than are the lands farther back from the stream. The cause of this phenomenon is that as lateral overflow diminishes the velocity of that flow, its coarser portions are deposited near the river banks, while the finer particles are carried farther away, until finally only the finest—clay-substance—reach the lagoons or lakes filled with the overflow or back-water, and there in the course of time deposited as heavy clay "swamp" soils. The same occurs where rivers empty into lakes or the sea; and these slack-water or delta lands are, as a rule, the most productive on the river's course. The continued productiveness of alluvial soil is moreover in many cases assured by the deposition, during overflows, or fresh soil-material brought down from the head waters of the streams. The Nile, and the Colorado river of the West, illustrate this point.
- Soils, Their Formation, Properties, Composition and Relations to Climate and Plant Growth in the Humid and Arid Regions. Macmillan. 1911. p. 15. (593 pages; 1st edition 1906)
External links
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Encyclopedic article on Eugene W. Hilgard on Wikipedia
