THE PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF THE SOIL.
L•etteres on Some of the Physical Properties of Sol. By Robert Warington, M.A. (The Clareudon Press, Oxford. 68.)—The con- tents of this volume, with the exception of the final chapter, formed the substance of a course of lectures delivered by the luthor as Sibthorpean Professor of Rural Economy in Oxford in 1896. It does not profess to be a text-book treating exhaustively of the physical properties of soil. But the lectures deal with some fulness of particular portions of the subject, such as "Physical Constitution of Soil," " Relations of Soil to Water," "Relations of Soil to Heat," and "Movements of Salt in the Soil," and as they are all treated from the experimental point of view, the book can in great measure at least he under- stood by readers who are not experts in agricultural chemistry. The practical value of many of the experimentations sum- marised in these lectures may be gathered from such a sentence as this : " A farmer once told the writer that dressing his heavy land with chalk had enabled hini to plough with two horses instead of three as formerly." While the ordinary intelligent and curious reader will find much to think about and interest him, the student will also find in it the results of patient investigation. At the same time he will somewhat regret to find that the soils of America havp been laced so mulch under contribution, and for the reason that the physical constitution and properties of English soils have as yet not been investigated save in a very few exceptional cases; this is doubtless due to the great lack of investigators and research laboratories in this country. Surely this defect
ought to be removed without delay. Meanwhile Mr. Waring ton's facts, figures, and deductions are of the highest value, both theoretical and practical, and we are glad to see that he thinks of following up this volume with another on a similar plan.
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