Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
the real development of soil was ignored, probably because the thickness of soil was
often an order of magnitude smaller than the thickness of transported and deposited
materials. During the second half of the nineteenth century, owing to the fact that
initial observations were not classifi ed and documented as they are now in a rational
scientifi c manner, little progress was achieved to better understand the origin of
soils.
We don't intend to say that there were not written reports where authors tried to
study soils to eventually understand their origin. We have mentioned already in Sect
4.6
that Darwin studied the role of earthworms during soil formation by mixing
mineral substances with products of humifi cation. He described his experiments in
a special publication in 1881. At that time he judged the quality of his soil formation
research to be higher than that of his 1859 formulation on the origin of species. The
start of his interest in soil formation was very simple. When his son was running on
the small hillside of Darwin's land, pieces of very thin rock chips were creaking
under his shoes. Thirty years later when Darwin walked and ran on the same small
hillside, there was no creaking. Wondering why, he decided to have a ditch exca-
vated across the small fi eld and learned that the creaking was no longer possible
because the skeletal particles had completely disappeared without a trace. Again
wondering why, he had the length of the ditch suffi ciently increased in order to
observe natural occurring variations within soil profi les along the entire extent of
his property. From his far-reaching observations and the disappearance of skeletal
particles, he concluded that the soil was evolving and that earthworms had a great
infl uence upon its evolution by mixing decaying remnants of plants with mineral
substances that were also simultaneously changing owing to weathering.
Although we could fi nd similar formulations about the evolution of soils pub-
lished in the nineteenth century, systematic descriptions of soil horizons and clas-
sifi cations of soils according to defi nite taxonomic rules were still lacking. In spite
of the fact that new ideas are in the air in the discoveries of our contemporary sci-
ences, not everybody is methodical and specialized in an entire branch of science.
This was what happened to Darwin in pedology, when he accredited evolution to
soils. The application of evolution principles to soils was the fi rst step performed by
Darwin. But the full and complete description of soils as a new and complex phe-
nomenon with all signs typical for a dynamic evolution leading to the great vari-
ability of soil types was the substance of the life achievements of V. V. Dokuchaev.
12.5
Everlasting Stimulus from Dokuchaev
The fi rst publications about evolution of chernozem and then on soil evolutionary
taxonomy appeared 2 years later written by V. V. Dokuchaev, the Russian professor
of Saint Petersburg University. It was a famous university with excellent professors
like the chemist D. I. Mendeleev, the mathematician P. L. Chebyshev, or the physi-
cist H. F. Lenz. Dokuchaev studied geology, mainly the Holocene. While he studied
at the university, he earned additional money for his own needs by privately
