Soil

In the agricultural sense soils are the superficial layers, usually less than a foot in thickness, of disintegrated and decomposed rock material, which is mingled with organic matter, and furnishes the necessary conditions and materials for plant growth.

— G. W. Tyrrell, The Principles of Petrology, Methuen, 1929, 184.

The United States alone, it is estimated by Federal geologists, is robbed of 783 million tons of its native soil every year in this way.
— A. W. Haslett, Unsolved Problems of Science, London 1937.

Rather more than a century ago Sir Charles Lyell, then an Oxford student, noticed that a small lake on his father’s Scotch estate was capable of depositing an appreciable layer of limestone on its bottom within quite a few years — and on his discovery that rocks could be built up as well as worn away is based a large part of modern geology.
— A. W. Haslett, Unsolved Problems of Science, London 1937.

The simplest form of weathering of exposed stone is that due to the physical action of wind and rain in actually eroding material from exposed surfaces. There is abundant evidence to show that this is actually an extremely slow process. Exposed parapet copings of Portland Stone high up on the outside of St Paul’s Cathedral in London have been studied and found to have eroded only 13 mm in 250 years.
— Robert F. Leggett, Cities and Geology, McGraw-Hill, 1973, 334.

It is the clay that makes the earth stick to his spade;
— Charlotte Mew (1869 – 1928) In Nunhead Cemetery.

Large earth-worms now abound on my grass-plot, where the ground was sunk more than a foot. At first when the earth was removed, none seemed to remain: but whether they were bred from eggs that were concealed in the turf, is hard to say.
— Gilbert White (1720 – 1793), Journal, 20th September, 1776, MIT Press, 1970.

… all the vegetable mould over the whole country has passed many times through, and will again pass many times through, the intestinal canal of worms.
— Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882), The formation of vegetable mould through the action of worms (1881).

Now this poison does not kill the plantain only but the roots of the grasses as well — hence the naked brown spots. How long does the poison keep its potency in the moist mould? A long time, I should think, seeing that these naked spots were some months old. I also wanted to know if the poison was deadly to other forms of life in the soil, especially to earthworms. To ascertain this, I took up mould enough from one of the barren spots to fill a flower-pot, then filled a second flower-pot with mould from outside the lawn, then went to the rose-garden at the back to dig for worms, and selecting two full-grown vigorous specimens, put one in each pot.
— W. H. Hudson, The Book of a Naturalist, no date, but before 1928, probably published in 1920.

… and yet surely to alchemy this right is due, that it may be compared to the husbandman whereof Aesop makes the fable; that, when he died, told his sons that he had left unto them gold buried under ground in his vineyard; and they digged over all the ground, and gold they found none; but by reason of their stirring and digging the mould about the roots of their vines, they had a great vintage the year following: so assuredly the search and stir to make gold hath brought to light a great number of good and fruitful inventions and experiments, as well for the disclosing of nature as for the use of man’s life.
— Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626, The Advancement of Learning, 1605.

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