DIFFERENT KINDS OF SOIL
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“Four substances, mingled in very variable proportions, enter into the composition of fertile soil, or arable land, namely: sand or silica, clay, limestone, and humus, or vegetable mold. Each one of these ingredients separately would make but very poor soil, quite unsuited for agriculture; but united, mixed together, they fulfill the conditions necessary to fertility. Arable land generally contains all four, with the predominance sometimes of one, sometimes of another. The soil takes the name of its most abundant constituent. Thus have arisen the names, silicious soil, argillaceous soil, calcareous soil, and humous soil, to designate the fertile lands dominated respectively by sand, clay, limestone, and humus. Compound terms are also used. For example, when it is said of a certain soil that it is argillo-calcareous, it is meant that clay and limestone are its chief constituents.