Excerpt from The National Cooperative Soil Survey in the United States Fortunately, we in the United States have many kinds of good soil. Altogether there are about kinds including those that are good and those that are not so good. We have a large total area of the good ones. Thus, American land users have a wide choice. We do not need to use every acre for food crops as do people in many crowded countries. Some day we may have greater need, but now it is not really necessary for our people to use soils for crops that cannot return a good harvest for the labor and materials used in production. Our main goal is efficiency of use on a sustained basis. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The Soil Survey Manual, USDA Handbook No. 18, provides the major principles and practices needed for making and using soil surveys and for assembling and using related data. The term ?soil survey? is used here to encompass the process of mapping, describing, classifying, and interpreting natural three-dimensional bodies of soil on the landscape. This work is performed by the National Cooperative Soil Survey in the United States and by other similar organizations worldwide. The Manual provides guidance, methodology, and terminology for conducting a soil survey but does not necessarily convey policies and protocols required to administer soil survey operations. The soil bodies contain a sequence of identifiable horizons and layers that occur in repeating patterns in the landscape as a result of the factors of soil formation as described by Dokuchaev (1883) and Jenny (1941).