" The soil is the placenta of life. "
- Anonymous Scientist -
In 1959, Peter Farb wrote a lovely book on the 'living' soil - Living Earth - which I reckon is all the more relevant for our times despite the time-gap. Tiny microscopic lives beyond our ordinary capacity to see them thrive within the teeming Earth in innumerable variety. We hardly know of their intricate relationships and of their unusual adaptive skills. But, in the years since Farb's concern, scientific understanding of the microscopic life and the placental soil has reached a new sophistication with a dawning awareness of the networks of ecosystems.
"The apparent lifelessness of a piece of earth is an illusion," wrote Farb. A teaspoon of soil from the temperate regions has the likelihood of containing 5 billion bacteria, 20 million actinomycetes, 1,000,000 protozoa, and 200,000 algae and fungi. "These crowds of microorganisms," points out Farb, "carry on such fierce activity on each acre that they expend an amount of energy equal to 10,000 human beings living and working there."
The curator of the world tropics Dr William Beebe of the New York Zoological Society over 90 years ago, who before climbing aboard his streamer after a bird expedition to Belem in Brazil, dumped a handfuls of jungle earth, mold, and decaying leaves in his old bag. En route to New York, he examined the jungle litter only to discover a hidden world of intricate beauty and complexity about which he eloquently wrote in Zoologica in 1916:
" Contracting the field of vision to this world where leaves were fields and fungi loomed as forests, competition, the tragedies, the mystery lessen not at all. Minute seeds mimicked small beetles in shape and in exquisite tracery of patterns; small beetles curled up and to the eye became minute seeds of beautiful design. Bits of bark simulated insects, a patch of fungus seemed a worm, and in their turn insects and worms became transmitted optically into immobile vegetation ... When we had worked with the lens for many minutes, all relative comparisons with the surrounding world were lost. Instead of looking down from on high, a being apart, with titanic brush of bristles ready to capture the fiercest of these jungle creatures, I, like Alice in Wonderland, felt myself growing smaller, becoming an onlooker, perhaps hiding behind a tiny leaf or twig. "
We walk on the solid Earth's surface which in fact is not solid at all. 'Many soils are more than half empty, filled only with air, water, and a multitude of living things between particles,' writes Farb. The 'soil beings' thrive between particles of soil rather than in the soil.
Bacteria live in clumps or colonies. Fungi concentrate around decaying plants and animal debris. Microbes swarm the roots of plants. Insects occupy favorable niches. 'Nor are the numbers of soil-dwellers a constant thing,' claims Farb. Activity and growth have definite periodic oscillations depending on the natural seasons. Soil of every variety has been hospitable to life. 'A bit of fungus,' Farb puts down in a memorable prose, 'before it is fully dead, may be attacked by ravenous bacteria. A highway gash leaves the bare ribs of the earth stripped of life; yet, shortly fungi send out strands, binding together the particles, holding them in place while seeds of colonizing plants gain a foothold. It is the same story, with infinite variations, of all the triumphs and tragedies that have occurred since the seas first receded and left a forlorn patch of dry ground.'
Wherever life can exist in the soil, nature has evolved a form to fill that niche across the three great soil types - forests, grasslands, and deserts. It should be a fascinating journey to visit all those communities of life in different soil ecosystems ranging from 'billions to the ounce to only a handful of some species per acre.' Ought to be done if one needs to comprehend the role of soil as a placental incubator of life!
- Anonymous Scientist -
In 1959, Peter Farb wrote a lovely book on the 'living' soil - Living Earth - which I reckon is all the more relevant for our times despite the time-gap. Tiny microscopic lives beyond our ordinary capacity to see them thrive within the teeming Earth in innumerable variety. We hardly know of their intricate relationships and of their unusual adaptive skills. But, in the years since Farb's concern, scientific understanding of the microscopic life and the placental soil has reached a new sophistication with a dawning awareness of the networks of ecosystems.
"The apparent lifelessness of a piece of earth is an illusion," wrote Farb. A teaspoon of soil from the temperate regions has the likelihood of containing 5 billion bacteria, 20 million actinomycetes, 1,000,000 protozoa, and 200,000 algae and fungi. "These crowds of microorganisms," points out Farb, "carry on such fierce activity on each acre that they expend an amount of energy equal to 10,000 human beings living and working there."
The curator of the world tropics Dr William Beebe of the New York Zoological Society over 90 years ago, who before climbing aboard his streamer after a bird expedition to Belem in Brazil, dumped a handfuls of jungle earth, mold, and decaying leaves in his old bag. En route to New York, he examined the jungle litter only to discover a hidden world of intricate beauty and complexity about which he eloquently wrote in Zoologica in 1916:
" Contracting the field of vision to this world where leaves were fields and fungi loomed as forests, competition, the tragedies, the mystery lessen not at all. Minute seeds mimicked small beetles in shape and in exquisite tracery of patterns; small beetles curled up and to the eye became minute seeds of beautiful design. Bits of bark simulated insects, a patch of fungus seemed a worm, and in their turn insects and worms became transmitted optically into immobile vegetation ... When we had worked with the lens for many minutes, all relative comparisons with the surrounding world were lost. Instead of looking down from on high, a being apart, with titanic brush of bristles ready to capture the fiercest of these jungle creatures, I, like Alice in Wonderland, felt myself growing smaller, becoming an onlooker, perhaps hiding behind a tiny leaf or twig. "
We walk on the solid Earth's surface which in fact is not solid at all. 'Many soils are more than half empty, filled only with air, water, and a multitude of living things between particles,' writes Farb. The 'soil beings' thrive between particles of soil rather than in the soil.
Bacteria live in clumps or colonies. Fungi concentrate around decaying plants and animal debris. Microbes swarm the roots of plants. Insects occupy favorable niches. 'Nor are the numbers of soil-dwellers a constant thing,' claims Farb. Activity and growth have definite periodic oscillations depending on the natural seasons. Soil of every variety has been hospitable to life. 'A bit of fungus,' Farb puts down in a memorable prose, 'before it is fully dead, may be attacked by ravenous bacteria. A highway gash leaves the bare ribs of the earth stripped of life; yet, shortly fungi send out strands, binding together the particles, holding them in place while seeds of colonizing plants gain a foothold. It is the same story, with infinite variations, of all the triumphs and tragedies that have occurred since the seas first receded and left a forlorn patch of dry ground.'
Wherever life can exist in the soil, nature has evolved a form to fill that niche across the three great soil types - forests, grasslands, and deserts. It should be a fascinating journey to visit all those communities of life in different soil ecosystems ranging from 'billions to the ounce to only a handful of some species per acre.' Ought to be done if one needs to comprehend the role of soil as a placental incubator of life!
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