Black Soil

Black soil may refer to:

  • Chernozem, fertile black soils found in eastern Europe, Russia and the Canadian prairies
  • Vertisol, dark cracking soils with a high clay content found between 50° N and 45° S of the equator
  • Terra preta (Portuguese,) “black earth” or soil of Amazon river basin

Famous quotes containing the words black and/or soil:

    “In it he proves that all things are true and states how the truths of all contradictions may be reconciled physically, such as for example that white is black and black is white; that one can be and not be at the same time; that there can be hills without valleys; that nothingness is something and that everything, which is, is not. But take note that he proves all these unheard-of paradoxes without any fallacious or sophistical reasoning.”
    —Savinien Cyrano De Bergerac (1619–1655)

    “The civilized nations—Greece, Rome, England—have been sustained by the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human culture! little is to be expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and it is compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers. There the poet sustains himself merely by his own superfluous fat, and the philosopher comes down on his marrow-bones.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)