The soil

The soil?.. Yes, it is about it that our story will go. After all, she herself is a very interesting and very complex part of inanimate nature. In addition, if you had to travel a lot, and you were observant at the same time, you could notice that the soil is far from the same everywhere. It varies very much in appearance and color, and sometimes on the river bank its separate layers clearly appear in the form of a motley and complex picture.

There was a time when the color of the soil was not given importance. The soil seemed to be just a land formed on the surface

There was a time when the color of the soil was not given importance. The soil seemed to be just a land formed on the surface. But if you take several soils and cut them vertically downwards, you can easily see how varied they are and how difficult it is to look into them. They consist of small particles of the most diverse minerals, but such small, that not only with a simple eye, but even in a magnifying glass they are difficult to discern. And yet they are also minerals, but their fate is special, since the soil lives with its own, special life.

The soil is formed from hard stones and stone rocks. Her education is also attended by Sun, which by its warmth destroys the rocks, and the rain that brings from the air carbon dioxide and a little nitric acid; and air with its gases - oxygen and carbonic acid: they all destroy rocks. In cold polar countries, the formation of soil is slow in the hot deserts of the south, where the sand is heated in the day so that it can boil eggs, the destruction of minerals is very rapid, and the hot winds carry off the smallest particles, leaving only a sea of sands. But in the middle latitudes, and especially under the tropics, the soil is formed so vigorously that its thickness is not meter and not two, and sometimes many tens and even hundreds of meters.

But do not think that the soil is just a crushed substance of our rocks; No, this is a much more complex body, because it reflects the fluctuations in the temperature of day and night, winter and summer; it begins and often ends the life of plants and animals, and it is impossible to separate the soil from the living world that inhabits it. In fact, the soil itself is something alive: in it, a variety of organisms are crawling, beginning with the smallest bacteria bacteria. In one gramme - in a pinch of land - there are billions of the smallest organisms, but with a depth of their number falls heavily and deeper than one meter they are already very few. Rodents, moles, ants, beetles, tarantulas, even some snails - all swarm in the ground, sometimes swallow it and, passing through their body, again secrete it. It turns out that on every hectare, twenty to twenty-five tons of soil passes through the digestive organs of earthworms every year. And the huge worms of Madagascar - geofagi (devourers of the earth) - pass through themselves annually billions of cubic meters, that is, whole cubic kilometers of land. And, of course, those minerals that are contained in the soil inside the body of these worms undergo a very strong and complex change.

Even ants, not to mention the tropical termites, erecting huge buildings, in some places show such tremendous activity that for a hundred years break the whole surface of the earth. And the roots of plants and trees, autumn leaves, dead stems - all this also directly lives and changes in soil, at the expense of soil and soil.

The soil lives a peculiar life, where the chemical processes of inanimate nature are so intertwined with the life of organisms that it is absolutely impossible to separate them from each other.

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