The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1889-08-22

these Islands more compact and |
more fertile every year; and the |
porosity complained Of in the virgin
soils, is only a condition of newness
and lack of sufficient vegetable de-
composition mixed in it. In coun-
tries where deciduous trees and
heritage abound, the yearly decay
and "fall of the leaf" soon enrich the
virgin soils; but Hawaiian trees and
vegetation, being mostly of perennial
kinds, the natural enrichment of the
soil is slower, and cultivation alone
can alter the porous conditions suffi
GENTLY fast to suit this progressive
age. Working and turning over the
soil, artificial fertilizers, manuring
with decayed vegetation and COM
post, ETC., all have beneficial effect;
and in a few years the natural por-
osity of the soils change under this
treatment, and compactness and
greater ability of the mold to hold
water, follows as a matter of course.
The following article from the
Cornhill Magazine brings out this
view in greater detail;
Without vegetation there is no such
| thing as soil on earth anywhere. The top
l.. L. Hkr.O
is composed entirely of vegetable mold,
the decaying remains of innumerable
generations of weeds and grasses. Earth
to earth is the rule of nature. Soil, in
fact, consists entirely of dead leaves
And where there are no leaves to die and
decay there can be no mold or soil to
speak of. Darwin showed in his last
great book that we owe the whole earthly
covering of our hills and plains almost
entirely to the perennial exertions d
that friend of the farmers, the harmless
earthworm. Year after. year the silent
worker is busy every night pulling down
leaves through his tunnelled burrow into
his underground nest, and there con
verting them, by means OF his castings
into the black mold which produces in
the end for lordly man all his cultivable
fields and pasture lands and meadows
Where there are no leaves and no earth
worms, therefore, there can be no soil
and under those circumstances we gel
what we Familiarity know as desert
The normal course of events where new
land rises above the sea is something
, like this, as oceanic isles have sufficiently
demonstrated. The rock, when it frs
energies from the water, rises bare
and rugged like sea cliff. NJ
, living thing, animal or vegetable
, is harbored anywhere on its max
ed surface. In time, however, al
rain falls upon its jutting peaks ant
, barren pinnacles, disintegration sets in
or to speak palmer English, the rock
crumbles, and soon streams wash dOwr
tiny deposits of sand and mud thus pro
, duced, into the valleys and hollows O
the upheaved area. At the same time
lichens begin to spring in yellow patches
upon the bare face of the rock, ant
feathery ferns, whose spores have beer
waited by the wind or carried by tn
waves or borne on the feet of uncon
scious birds sprout here and there from
the clefts and crannies. These, as the,
die and decay, in turn form thin laye
of vegetable mold, the first beginning
? of local soil, in which the trusty earth
worm Imported in the egg on driftwoo,
or floating weeds) straightway sets t
t work to burrow, and which he rapidl
: increases by his constant labor. On tn
! soil thus deposited Towering plants an
l trees can soon root themselves as fast a
seeds, nuts, or fruits are waited to tn
island by various accidents from SUI
rounding countries. The new Lam
thrown up by the great eruption Q
!. Krakatoa has in this way alread
clothed itself from head to foot with
luxuriant sheet of ferns, MOSES, an
. other vegetation.