ABSTRACT
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries many farmers and amateur geologists became interested in the reasons for the distribution of the different types of soil. They came to the general conclusion that there was a direct and fairly simple relationship between the character of the soil and the nature of the rock beneath it. They found chalky soils on chalk, sandy soils on sandstone, clayey soils on shales and organic soils on peat and so they devised soil classifications which were based on the nature of the underlying soil-parent-material. Nearly all these workers had experience of only small areas however; it was not until the latter part of the nineteenth century that individual pedologists gained a knowledge of soils on a continental scale. When this was achieved there ensued a change in attitude towards soil classification. Soils of very similar character were found in great belts extending across large parts of European Russia and the U.S.A. and individual soil belts frequently crossed rock outcrops of very diverse lithology. It became apparent that other factors, particularly climate and vegetation, were just as important as parent-material in determining the ultimate nature of the soil.
