Browsing by Author "Milne, G."

Now showing 1 - 20 of 21

A Chemical Survey of the Waters of Mount Meru, Tanganyika Territory, Especially with Regard to their Qualities for Irrigation
(1983) Sturdy, D.; Calton, W.E.; Milne, G.; Department of Agriculture, Tanganyika. East African Agricultural Research Station, Amani
In this paper are presented the results of a number of analyses of water-samples taken during the years 1931 and 1982 from the streams and minor lakes occurring on the slopes of Meru, the dominating mountain of the district of Arusha, Northern Province, Tanganyika Territory. The work originated in the examination at Amani of a few samples from streams on the south-west of the mountain, at the request of Mr. E. Harrison, Director of Agriculture for Tanganyika, who on the occasion of a visit to the area in December, 1930, expressed the opinion that alkali salts, either originating naturally in the soil or introduced by irrigation, were possibly causing injury to coffee, the principal economic crop of the district. It is common knowledge, locally, that the streams draining from Meru contain "soda" in greater or less amount, but in spite of this they have been employed for irrigation, sometimes on a lavish scale. The results of these first analyses made it clear that a systematic chemical survey was desirable if guidance was to be offered on the merits of this practice in the several divisions of the district, and one of us (D.S., in his capacity as District Agricultural Officer, Arusha) began a series of periodical samplings of the principal streams. The analyses were carried out by another of us (W.E.C.) in the soils laboratory at Amani. At a later stage, in view of the relevance of the whole subject to the study of the volcanic soils of the area, it was decided to extend the samplings beyond the range originally contemplated, so as to include all waters rising on the mountain whether or not they came into question for irrigation. This was done during a circuit of the mountain made by D.S. and W.E.C. in company in August, 1932.
A Comment on the Pole-Evans' Report
(1939/1940) Milne, G.
Dr. I. B. Pole-Evans' Report on a Visit to Kenya was reviewed in the East African Press at the time of its publication last year and has been widely discussed. Its subject was the grasslands of Kenya, chiefly those of the native reserves. Its thesis was that pastoral science is a subject of not less importance in Kenya than agriculture, forestry or veterinary science, and that it calls for specialist handling in its own right. The main recommendations of the Report were for aerial and ground surveys of vegetation in the reserves; for the withdrawal of stock (and to the extent found practicable, of the people) from certain areas to be selected for reconditioning; and for the establishment of pastoral research stations in these areas under a Director of Pastoral Research. A resolution of the Settlement and Production Board in October last advised the Kenya Government that action upon the Report should not be delayed by the war and that the establishment of the pastoral research stations should be proceeded with.
Essays Applied in Pedology II- Some Factors in Soil Mechanics
(1938) Milne, G.; East African Agricultural Research Station
[In the May, 1937, number of this Journal (Vol. II, pp. 465-469) extracts were given from a survey by Sir John Russell, written for the Royal Agricultural Society of England, summarizing certain recent advances in soil physics. The headings concerned the significance of soil crumbs, and moisture relationships. In the present article the first of these subjects is dealt with more fully, in an East African setting.]
Essays in Applied Pedology
(July,1938) Milne, G.; East African Agricultural Research Station, Amani, Department of Agriculture, Tanganyika Territory
Soil conditions in the humid eastern part of Bukoba District, on the west side of Lake Victoria, are examined, first in the light of the natural factors in soil formation, which have led to laterization and general poverty in plant nutrients. but with local inequalities due to the parent rocks; and secondly in the light of the effects of human occupation, which have been to accentuate the local inequalities, so that the environs of villages are productive but the inter-village lands are infertile
Essays in Applied Pedology: III-Bukoba: High and Low Fertility on a Laterised Soil and including a Note on Soil Fertility at Nyakato
(1938) Milne, G.; Savile, A.H.; East African Agricultural Research Station, Amani. Department of Agriculture, Tanganyika Territory
Bukoba is a small township and lake port in Tanganyika Territory, on the west coast of the Victoria Nyanza, twenty-eight miles south of the point of entry of one of the principal Nile Head-Waters, the Kagera River. The name is also that of an administrative district, which lies between the Uganda border on the north and Biharamulo District on the south and runs west to the Belgian mandated territory of Ruanda, adjoining it along the middle course of the Kagera. Bukoba District thus includes in its western half the long low-lying valley of the Mwisha River and the highland of Karagwe. The easternmost part of the district is however the part with which the present essay is mainly concerned: a strip of humid ridge-and-valley country twelve to sixteen miles wide running down the lake coast from latitude 1 S. to 2 S., ie for about seventy. miles. This area of about a thousand square miles, comparable in size with one of the smaller English counties, contains 230,000 rural inhabitants. The only townfolk, those in Bukoba itself, number less than 2,000. The density of population reaches 1,230 per square mile in one of the sub-chiefdoms. In five others it exceeds 400 and over the remainder of the area it averages 180. Thus, in the most crowded parts each family, reckoned at five persons, is supported by only 2.6 acres, and in the least crowded parts by 17.8 acres on the average. For East Africa such figures represent very close settlement. The people are the Bahaya, bananaeaters and to a limited extent cattlekeepers. They live in family units on permanent heritable holdings, each house and attached quarters for cattle standing hidden in its banana-grove. A group of adjoining holdings is marked as a feature in the landscape by its aggregate stand of bananas, sharply limited against surrounding larger stretches of unenclosed treeless grassland. These banana-grove" villages" may partly fill a valley alongside a stream, or may form the skyline on a high ridge, or may occupy middle positions on slopes, with open. ground above and below. The intervening lands are mostly grazing commons, but patches of them are tilled. Many of the ridges' end in sandstone bluffs and scree: slopes, and these outcrops of rock render a proportion of the land agriculturally untenable. The main river-valleys and valley junctions contain considerable areas of permanent swamp, some parts of which are papyrus, some are tussocky grassland on peat, and some carry blocks of dense evergreen swamp-forest. There are small remnants of rain-forest on the steep sides of certain ridges.
Iii-Bukoba: High and Low Fertility on a Laterese'd Soil
(1938) Milne, G.; Savile, A.H.
Soil conditions in the humid eastern part of Bukoba District, on the west side of Lake Victoria, are examined, first in the light of the natural factors in soil formation, which have led to laterization and general poverty in plant nutrients, but with local inequalities due to the parent rocks; and secondly in the light of the effects of human occupation, which have been to accentuate the local inequalities, so that the environs of villages are productive but the inter-village lands are infertile.
Mechanical composition of East African Soils
(1943) Milne, G.; Caiton, W. E.; East African Agricultural Research Station, Amani
The object of the present paper is to review some of, the data on East African soils which have accumulated at Amani in the past few years. The soils discussed include type samples collected on various traverses and reconnaissances, the study of which led to the production of a Provisional Soil Map of East Africa in 1935. The memoir accompanying this map indicated that detailed accounts of the main soil types would be published later. For various reasons it had not been possible to do this, except incidentally in reports and papers mainly of local interest, and now, following the tragically sudden death of the senior author, much knowledge of East African soils is lost. In this, and subsequent papers which are projected, it is hoped to show some of the basic properties of East African soils and the lines along which soil investigation was developing.
Mechanical Composition of East African Soils
(1943) Milne, G.; Calton, W.E.; Amani
The object of the present paper is to review some of 'the data on East African soils which have accumulated at Amani in the past few years. The soils discussed include type samples collected on various traverses and reconnaissances, the study of which led to the production of a Provisional Soil Map of East Africa in 1935. The memoir accompanying this map indicated that detailed accounts of the main soil types would be published later. For various reasons it had not been possible to do this, except incidentally in reports and papers mainly of local interest, and now, following the tragically sudden death of the senior author, much knowledge of East African soils is lost. In this, and subsequent papers which are projected, it is hoped to show some of the basic properties of East African soils and the lines along which soil investigation was developing.
Note on Soil Conditions and two East African Vegetation Types
(1937) Milne, G.
The following note on the pedological findings as they provisionally stand in relation to the ecological problems of Itigi Thicket and Miombo in the Central Province of Tanganyika has been stimulated by Mr. C. Gillman's letter on East African Vegetation types in the Journal of Ecology for August 1936 (24, 502-5).
Soil and Vegetation
(1940) Milne, G.; East African Agricultural Research Station, Amani, Tanganyika Territory
A natural plant cover is in many ways an expression of the effective influences of site, soil and climate. For this reason, the inspection of vegetation has sometimes been regarded as a superior substitute for the study of soils, especially in reconnoitring the agricultural potentialities of undeveloped country. The underlying supposition is that all soil properties that are really significant in the given circumstances will receive expression through the plants, and that any remaining properties can be safely neglected. This supposition is, however, a valid one only in simple cases, which are rather rare; and as the basis of a practical or "commonsense" method of assay it has repeatedly led to mistakes in land utilization, particularly in the exploitation of tropical forests and of natural grasslands. If used uncritically it is liable to fail, firstly because botanical science is not yet equipped to apply it, and secondly because of an imperfect appreciation of the nature of the relationship between plants and soil.
Soil And Vegetation
(1940) Milne, G.
A natural plant cover is in many ways an expression of the effective influences of site, soil and climate. For this reason the inspection of vegetation has sometimes been regarded as a superior substitute for the study of soils, especially in reconnoitring the agricultural potentialities of undeveloped country.
Soil Conservation- The Research Side
(1940) Milne, G.
Much is written nowadays in agricultural journals about the combating of soil erosion, both in regard to the urgency for it, and on methods. Rather little, comparatively, is said about the research background of soil conservation. Yet behind our present knowledge of the processes of accelerated erosion, d Supporting what has been achieved in successful remedial measures, lies a mass of careful observation in the field in many countries. Arising out of this and aimed at clarifying many questions of principle or of detail a great deal of organized research has en started and is already fruitful. Besides these more general inquiries, investigation of the particular circumstances precedes. or should ~recede, each local soil conservation programme, as a necessary preparatory stage before actual measures are undertaken.
A Soil Reconnaissance Journey Through Parts of Tanganyika Territory December 1935 To February 1936
(1936) Milne, G.
his soil reconnaissance journey was made between 7 December 1935 and 4 February 1936 to certain parts of the Central, Western and Lake Provinces of Tanganyika Territory, passing en route through parts of the Tanga and Eastern Provinces. For some portions of the ground covered other information was already to hand and in making the commentary this earlier material has been incorporated. Previous laboratory acquaintance had also been made with some of the soils from the admirably documented collections made by BD Burtt in 1933-4. The present report is thus a connected generalized account of soil conditions along the route so far as they are understood to date. The objects of the journey were to look for the relationships of the principal soil types to each other and to the various natural factors concerned in soil formation, taking particular account of vegetation. It was found that here, in semiarid Tanganyika, the soil and vegetation zones
A Soil Reconnaissance Journey Through Parts of Tanganyika Territory December 1935 To February 1936
(1947) Milne, G.; Amani;
When Geoffrey Milne's grand and stimulating Reconnaissance Report was first circulated in typescript to various Technical Departments and interested individuals towards the end of 1936, the desire was keenly felt to have this masterful exposition of many' burning' problems brought to the notice of a wider scientific circle. And when, at about the same time, Prof. :A. G. Tansley, of Oxford, in a letter to Millme regarding the Itigi thicket controversy, expressed his conviction that 'the soil-vegetation complex is in many ways so intimately one thing that it should be dealt with as a whole', and' that it is all to the good that plant ecologists should have their attention firmly directed to pedology', the possibility of covering Milne's ground in a joint paper with B. D. Burtt was ventilated. But fate willed otherwise. Leave movements of Burtt in 1937 and of Milne in 1938 first delayed, and then Burtt's deplorable death in 1938 put a sad stop to further progress in this direction_ On his return from Central and North: America late in 1938, Milne was preoccupied with more pressing work, and then the war demanded his brain and energy to work on problems very different from those of long-range research. Thus, when early in 1942 we had to adjust ourselves to the irretrievable loss caused by his premature death,
Soil Salinity Related to the Clearing of Natural Vegetation
(1944) Milne, G.; Calton, W.E.; East African Agricultural Research Institute, Amani: Assistant Government Analyst, Tangnyika Territorry
In 1940 the late Mr. Milne visited a group of sisal estates in the lOW-lying country at the foot of an escarpment where encroaching soil salinity had been reporte.d. He left a comprehensive report which is of general interest because it points to a closer relation between soil conditions of upland and ajacent lowland than is generally realized and the phenomenon may repeat itself elsewhere. The conception of a catena or topographic sequence of soils implies that each type in the series is inter-related and affects the other. Here, where the problem centres on two very mobile soil constituents-water and soluble salts-the catenary aspect is important; in fact, without appreciation of it, the appearance of toxic amounts of salt and the possibilities of encroachment or recession are largely unpredictable. The following summarizes Mr. Milne's report. The junior author was concerned with the investigation and was responsible for the analytical work.
Soil Salinity Related to the Clearing of Natural Vegetation
(1943) Milne, G.; . Calton. W.E.; Amani
In 1940 the late Mr. Milne visited a group of sisal estates in the low-lying country at the foot of an escarpment where encroaching soil salinity had been reported. He left a comprehensive report which is of general interest because it points to a closer relation between soil conditions of upland and adjacent lowland than is generally realized and the phenomenon may repeat itself elsewhere. The conception of a catena or topographic sequence of soils implies that each type in the series is inter-related and affects the other. Here, where the problem centres on two very mobile soil constituents—water and soluble salts—the catenary aspect is important; in fact, without appreciation of it, the appearance of toxic amounts of salt and the possibilities of encroachment or recession are largely unpredictable. The following summarizes Mr. Milne's report. The junior author was concerned with the investigation and was responsible for the analytical work. The damaged sisal was on low ground adjacent to the flats of a river. At the time it was planted the soil conditions, as judged by the natural vegetation (grasses and herbs), were considered normal, though evidently the water-table was near the surface during the rains. At first the sisal grew satisfactorily and several cuts of good leaf were obtained, but for some time, and especially after 1939, large areas had been dying, together with all weeds and other vegetation except a salt-bush Suaeda monoica Forsk,(locally called" N yonya" and well known as a dominant in saline soils) which was not there originally. In some places so much salt had been accumulated on the soil surface that it was collected by natives. The steady spread of the salt even into areas well above swamp level was noticed. Preliminary soil samples sent to the Laboratory confirmed that a high concentration of salts, about 6 per cent, was present in the surface soils where sisal had died completely. A sample from an area of dying sisal showed 1.5 per cent salts, and an adjacent area of still healthy sisal had about 0.7 per cent at 18 in. depth, though there were only traces near the surface. The salts were chlorides and sulphates of sodium and magnesium with traces of sodium carbonate at depth in one area. A study of the problem in the field showed that it involved the conditions of soil formation and water balance in the whole of the stretch of country, which is a narrow strip of sloping ground lying between the foot of the high escarpment and the flood plain of the river running roughly parallel to it.
Soil Type and Soil Management in Relation to Plantation Agriculture in East Usambara
(1937) Milne, G.; East African Agricultural Research Station, Amani, Tanganyika Territory.
The history of Arabica coffee planting in forest clearings in East Usambara (Tanganyika Territory) is briefly sketched, from its beginning in 1891, through the decline of the plantations during the decade before the war, to their almost complete abandonment at the present day. The soil (a laterized red earth on gneiss) is described in relation to the factors in its formation and particularly in its relation to the evergreen forest. The effects of clearing and of non-intensive plantation practice are traced, and the conclusion is drawn that the hope now being entertained of bringing the old coffee clearings again into production under other permanent crops depends for fulfilment on the adoption of intensive methods on small acreages.
Soils In Relation To Native Population In West Usambara
(1944) Milne, G.; AMANI
The West Usambaras present agricultural and administrative problems which are fundamentally concerned with the properties of soils. It is the pedologist's sphere to study these and offer what advice he can on the use of land. The present study, which was primarily to investigate ways of easing the pressure of native population on the plateau of West Usambara, deals first, in some detail, with an area of outlying country thought to be capable of native settlement, and then reviews the position in the West Usambaras as a whole.
Some Aspects of Modern Practice In - Soil Survey
(1940) Milne, G.; M.Sc., F.I.C., Soil Chemist; East African Agricultural Research Station, Amani
The present-day outlook upon soil survey has been aptly summarized in the statement that its results form "the factual basis in the development of sound programmes of land use." The growing literature of the subject now constantly reminds those who are applying soil science in this branch that it is the land that is the reality that is to be investigated, classified, inventoried, and interpreted. Soil maps and survey reports are to find their justification as guides to the efficient use of the land; they are necessary documents in the framing of policy, whether local or national, in regard to rural production.

Kenya Agricultural &
Livestock Research Organization

Browsing by Author "Milne, G."

Social Media Links

Contact Us

Our Address