ABSTRACT
Soils are derived from the rocks and minerals which make up the surface of Earth. They may be developed on parent materials which have not been involved in any erosion cycle; thus hard or soft bedrocks weather in situ to give residual soils. Such country rocks are residual parent materials and will consist of igneous, sedimentary or metamorphic rocks. Alternatively the soil-forming parent material may have already passed through one or more cycles of erosion and soil formation; these are transported soils on parent materials and consist of sediments that have been moved by ice (moraines, till, fluvioglacial deposits), wind (aeolian sands, loess), water (alluvial, marine, lacustrine) and gravity (colluvium). In Britain these deposits form the majority of parent materials, many of which date from Pleistocene times.
