Xviii BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



cobble stones, pebbles, gravel, and other material usually denominated 

 drift. One maj^ travel for days Avithout seeing a rock of any kind. The 

 fcM' rocks found in some localities, are generally calcareous, and the bed 

 rock which underlies the whole county is either clay or calcareous slate, 

 with occasional veins of trap. This bed rock or ledge is everj-vviiere 

 reached at from twenty t» fifty feet below the surface, and rai-ely can 

 wells be sunk so as to obtain water. The soil is a clay loam strongly 

 impregnated with lime, and vegetable mould is found ten feet below the 

 surface. Foi* cereals, and in fact for almost any crop, no soil can have a 

 better composition. The character of tlie rocky formation may be studied 

 at Grand Falls, where the ledge is a mixture of slate and limestone, the 

 strata having an anticlinal, the two sides dipping northwest and south- 

 west. In the matter of building, the absence of rocks would be seriously 

 felt, were it not for the giant cedar trees, which are everj^where mixed 

 with the hard wood growth and which are used for fencing, for making 

 bridges and culverts, and even for walling up cellai's. 



The general reader will have but little interest in a description of the 

 smaller vegetation which helps to make up the flora of Aroostook county, 

 but the composition of the forests is a matter of great imi^ortance to those 

 who think of going there to live. The vegetation is very different in dif- 

 ferent parts of the county. The country bordering on both sides of the 

 St. John, from Boundary branch at the northwestern part of the county, 

 to Grand Falls, has the flora peculiar to northwestern localities in the 

 same latitude, and is distinct from any other part of Maine. Here we 

 find the Astragulus Alpirms^ the Oxytropis Uralensis. the Artemesia borealis, 

 the Hedysarum boreale. and numerous other Alpine plants, while the whole 

 region through which they are distributed is covered with a heavy growth 

 of cone-bearing trees, such as spruce, fir. hemlock and pine, this being the 

 most valuable part of the county for lumbering purposes. South of this 

 limit, not at once, but gradually, there is a marked change in the charac- 

 ter of the smaller vegetation, while the cone-bearing forests give place to 

 . areas of hard wood, consisting of maple, beecli and oak. We do not wish 

 •,to be understood as saying that there are no timber lands south of the 

 limit we have described, but tliat the hard wood growth predominates. 

 Mixed in with the hard wood, almost everywhere may be found gigantic 

 - cedar trees, as large and as tall as the sugar maples, and growing by their 

 side. These cedars are worked up into shingles and fencing material, 

 besides being used as a substitute for stone, as already stated. 



Formerly the entire county of Aroostook was the property of Maine 

 and Massachusetts, but for one purpose and another these lands have 

 been parted with, until tliere are now no public lands. Some of it has 

 been sold at a very low price, for lumbering purposes ; some has been 

 granted to institutions of learning, and this, too, has fallen into the liands 

 of the lumber kings; and in 1868 the Legislature foolishly granted nearly 

 all the rest to aid in building a railway to St. John, which is very little if 

 any benefit to the State. A railway to Houlton. Presque Isle and Caribou, 

 through the heart of the county, would have remunerated the State for 



