File:Soils and fertilizers (1919) (14577281300).jpg

Identifier: soilsfertilizers00lyon (find matches)
Title: Soils and fertilizers
Year: 1919 (1910s)
Authors: Lyon, Thomas Lyttleton, 1869- (from old catalog)
Subjects: Soils Fertilizers
Publisher: New York, The Macmillan company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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he expansive power of freezingwater amounts to about 150 tons to a square foot, which isequivalent to a column of rock a third of a mile in height.The rock surface becomes chipped off by repeated freezingand even great masses of rock are detached by the freezingof water in larger cracks, as may be seen beneath rock ledgesin the spring of the year. An interesting example of the effect on rock disintegrationof a cold moist climate as compared with a dry one is foundin the difficulty that has been experienced in preservingthe obelisk, now in Central Park, New York, which had pre-viously stood for many hundreds of years in the Egyptiandesert without great damage. It has been found necessaryto cover the entire surface of the stone with paraffine inorder to preserve the hieroglyphics carved on its surface. 12. Action of water. — Water has another effect on rock.It is a solvent, weak but universal. It acts on all minerals, dis-solving slight quantities of some, considerably more of others.
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Plate III. Water Erosion. — The wearing action of water is slowbut constant, and is leveling the surface of the earth at the rate of aninch in several hundred years. SOIL FORMATION AND TRANSPORTATION 13 It is as a transporting agent that water is most active.From the time when raindrops beat down on the surfaceof the soil, while they are gathering into rivulets and therivulets are becoming rivers that discharge into the ocean,they are engaged in moving particles of rock debris andsoil. It is estimated that the United States is being planeddown at the rate of one inch in seven hundred and sixtyyears. This is rapid enough if it were applied at one pointto dig the Panama Canal in seventy-three days. The carrying power of water has resulted in the formationof the rich river valley soils that have been deposited bythe streams flowing through them. The coastal soils andlake soils have also been transported by water. 13. Action of ice. — In former times a considerable part ofthe northern

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