152 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



I have presented here, very roughly illustrates what I believe represents the connec- 

 tion in a north and south direction from Centralia to Cairo. Here is the Grand Chain 

 sloping to Cairo, which we will suppose to be at the bottom of the paper. Here is the 

 lowest point, representing the Big Muddy river. Without going into details of the 

 geology of the country there, it is sufficient to say that it is in the form represented 

 there, vnth exaggeration. The Big Muddy, at Carbondale, is only 16 feet above 

 the Ohio at Cairo. Well, then, this elevation is 600 feet; between these points we 

 have six different soils, and in some places they can all be seen at once. Besides that, 

 we have a sandy soil belonging to the tertiary era, and then alluvial soil at Cairo. I. 

 have tried to represent these several soils superimposed on each other. I call them all 

 soils, although the lowest of them is a white clay which can only be prepared for vege- 

 tation artiiicially. We have then No. 1, which is the black loam of the prairie, of the 

 timber ridge, on the margin of the prairie. No. 2, a whitish clay, whicb often is the 

 prairie surface, particularly in the Southern prairies. No. 3, a chocolate colored 

 clay. No. 4, a white clay, similar to No. 2. No. 5, a yellowish drift clay, something 

 like that underlying the clay of your Northern prairie. No. 6, a whitish clay before 

 referred to, and lying on the rock formation beneath . 



You mil notice but two lines, representing 5 and 6, as running over this whole 

 country. The soil of that ridge is this No. 5. It appears in this basin— in these little 

 elevated points, where they are just high enough to be above No. 6. The entire sec- 

 tion is eleven feet ten inches, but this was taken from near the north line of Franklin 

 county. No. 5 is a very finely comminuted, arenaceous clay. It corresponds with the 

 clay further north under the black loam, except that, as we go south, that intermixing 

 of particles has caused it to be much finer than it is further north, and practically 

 makes it a different kind of soil. Nos. 5 and 6 belong to the drift era. All these others 

 were later than the drift; they were formed at a later period. They came in from the 

 eastern part of the drift to the Big Muddy, and probably the Saline. 



These white clay lands— the lime mud-cMft of our friend Rural— are No. 2, mainly. 

 No. 5 is very similar to it, but No. 5 represents the soils that are seen further north, as 

 far as Neoga, on the Illinois Central Railroad. No. 3 is the same as I see down here. 

 ("T" on diagram). It is an entirely different soil from any other, and it has a splendid 

 system of under-draining; it all rests on a bed of open ground. The hills are only 

 about sixty feet high from the bottom, and it is apparently a uniform kind of soil. It 

 is such a peculiar soil that wells are dug in it and do not require to be walled up. 



Now, when we come to apply our horticultural knowledge, as directed, to kinds and 

 varieties of fruit, we are totally in the dark except as to these soils. The location of 

 these soils pi-esents such different meteorological conditions, so that what would apply 

 in one case mil not apply in any other. Coming from the north to this point ("S" on 

 the diagram), there is nothing more than the absence of the generally overlying yel- 

 lowish clay which constitutes the general surface of the prairie land. In the course oi 

 deposition, in some cases, this No. 5 may not have been distributed equally. In other 

 cases it may have been washed away by currents of water after it had been deposited. 

 I cannot give you a distinctive character except as persons have noticed how different 

 the timber is on these different lands. It is not distributed over any continuous district, 

 but it is continually broken into different patches. The absence of No. 1 makes No. 2 

 the surface. Where they are smaU they are often called "licks." It is an efflores- 

 cence of alum, which cattle like. 



