Soil Science Quotes (4 quotes)
Quand le sol aura été interrogé, il répondra.
When the soil has been questioned, it will answer.
When the soil has been questioned, it will answer.
From La Seine-Inférieure Historique et Archéologique: Époques Gauloise, Romaine et Franque (1866), 388. Used as epigraph in Mortimer Wheeler, Archaeology from the Earth (1954), xii. English by Webmaster using Google translate.
A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus.
In 'The Practical Farmer' (Oct 1940), collected in One Man’s Meat (1942), 218.
The frost is God’s plough which he drives through every inch of ground in the world, opening each clod, and pulverizing the whole.
As quoted in Henry Southgate (ed.), Many Thoughts of Many Minds (1862), 237.
What shall be done with nature to reclaim
The herbless, treeless waste? those dead seas past,
Dried summer lands, deserts and “antres vast,”
The earth’s reproach, her barrenness and shame.
Can human toil and foresight help the same?
Science, of soils declares with grand forecast,
Last shall be first, and first shall be the last
To come to fruit in Irrigation’s name!
The herbless, treeless waste? those dead seas past,
Dried summer lands, deserts and “antres vast,”
The earth’s reproach, her barrenness and shame.
Can human toil and foresight help the same?
Science, of soils declares with grand forecast,
Last shall be first, and first shall be the last
To come to fruit in Irrigation’s name!
In 'Arid Lands', Poems of Expansion (1898), 108.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
