16 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



insuflScient to support a succulent growth of horticultural varieties of 

 vegetables but the perpetual filtering of water through the soil has 

 leached away most of the elements of soil fertility, leaving little but 

 washed silica in reach of shallow rooting plants. Only a mile or two 

 away may be found a sandy swamp without natural surface drainage, 

 where the soil water is charged with nutrient materials and always 

 available to growing plants. Here the intelligent gardener or the grower 

 of small fruit may succeed after suitably draining the land. On the 

 dry sand no success is possible without soil building, liberal fertilizing 

 and irrigation. The requirements of the latter situation have exceeded 

 the intellectual and financial resources of most of those who have sought 

 to build homes on such lands. 



The causes of so great differences in character of sand soils in adjac- 

 ent areas are easily found. First, all the drier sands are near the large 

 drainage channels. They are dry because, as noticed before, the water 

 that falls upon them settles nearly to the level of the river and oozes 

 laterally into the stream. In such lauds we find few streamlets feed- 

 ing the main stream. The water never accumulates to the extent that 

 it must escape by surface channels. As we go back from the river at 

 right angles to its course we find the water table rising gradually toward 

 the surface until, at a few miles distance, we find it at the surface, the 

 soil therefore saturated, causing swampy or semi-swampy conditions. 

 This progressive rising of the water table away from the stream is 

 clearly caused by the increased resistance to lateral movement of under- 

 ground water with increase of distance from the receiving stream, hence 

 the water piles higher and higher as the required pressure becomes 

 greater. 



A second important cause of the moist areas of sand is related to the 

 underlying formation. If the overwashed sands forming these plains 

 could be removed completely we would find the exposed surface to be 

 much like that of Gasnovia townshij), only that the hills would be 

 much lower as compared with lake level, and the valleys perhaps shal- 

 lower. Some of these summits of burled hills rise to the present sand 

 surface, others are at varying distances below. These sand-filled valleys 

 form water pockets that never dry out. Here vegetation has grown 

 and accumulated humus for ages and when the land is cleared it be- 

 comes a productive field if properly managed. If nature has mixed 

 in some of the clay that lies close below, the soil is thereby made almost 

 ideal for gardening. 



What we find here described in the vicinity of Muskegon River, is 

 doubtless repeated many times, in varying degrees, along the west coast 

 of the State, and much of the description applies to similar extensive 

 tracts in the interior of the State. 



A historian, having drawn lessons from the records of the past, 

 naturally turns to look into the future. I presume that at this point 1 

 may be allowed a few words of opinion. It is notorious that many 

 people from the larger cities have been deluded in the belief that certain 

 lands in this county and others similar to them in other parts of the 

 State, held on the market at small price, offered to them a place for 

 home building where they would be free and independent. In numerous 



