Whether or not their lands will give better crop yields if lime¹ is applied has become a live question with Iowa farmers. They have written many letters of inquiry upon this point to the Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station and hundreds of soil samples have been analyzed to make satisfactory answer.

To provide more complete information relative to this important question of soil acidity and the use of lime in Iowa, the agronomy section of the experiment station gathered many soil samples from well scattered localities in the principal soil areas. These were analyzed and the results are now presented and discussed in this bulletin. These analyses show that liming is likely to be profitable in the Mississippi loess, the Southern Iowa loess and the Iowan drift areas because those soils are very apt to be more or less acid; also, that the soils of the Wisconsin drift are only occasionally in need of liming, and those of the Missouri loess only very rarely.