The opening of Preface
This volume was originally designed to serve as a text and reference book for the students attending the writer’s course on soils, given annually at the University of California, who complained of their inability to find in any connected treatise a large portion of the subject matter brought before them. As all these students had preliminary training in physics, chemistry and botany, no introductory chapters on these general subjects were necessary or contemplated; the more so as good elementary treatises embracing the needful preparation are now numerous.
As time progressed, however, outside demands for a book embodying the writer’s soil studies in the humid and arid regions, especially the latter, became so numerous and pressing that the scope of the work has gradually been much enlarged to conform to these demands; and this, rather than completeness of detail, when such detail can be found well given elsewhere, has been the guide in the necessary condensation of the whole. To give the entire subject matter full elucidation, would require several more volumes.