-[46 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



elevation. The men growing pears at Centralia, South Pass, and Villa 

 Ridge give very conlradiclory results from the same kinds, and not 

 widely diflerent treatment. 



At some other points the Yellow Bellflower a])ples are highly 

 prized and give satisfactory crops in the prairie region, while in adjoin- 

 ing places, trees twenty-the years old may not have ])roduced a single 

 good crop, and the general voice of fruit growers upon the prairie at the 

 north is rather against this apple on account of unproductiveness. 



Some think it not safe to cultivate the Chestnut in the prairie, others 

 show success. The cultivation of the sugar-beet for the production of 

 sugar as a source of profit has been a complete failure in one locality in 

 the prairie, but successful in another. Corn crops are rather uncertain 

 in one portion of Southern Illinois, but may be considered as never fail- 

 ing in another. 



I have referred to the whitish clay that occasionally appears from 

 Neoga southward, and known in the vicinity of the Ohio and Mississippi 

 Railroad as "scalds." There is another whitish clay of similar appear- 

 ance that forms a considerable extent of the surface in the region of 

 Big Muddy, but this is a stratum of much more recent origin and is 

 often under culture. If the season is dry enough to permit of early 

 plowing and planting, this clay land produces a fine crop of corn, but 

 if the spring is wet, making the planting late, the drouth of summer 

 comes too soon and the yield is small. 



In sections where the scalds are near the surface there is an excess 

 of moisture in the spring and a lack of it in the summer, and fruit trees 

 of some kinds are more liable to suffer than where a few more feet of 

 soil, of the general composition of the prairie, covers it. 



The failure of beet culture for sugar was remedied by removing from 

 a soil highly nitrogenous and much like a partially drained slough, to a 

 sandy or gravelly soil less rich in humus. 



The discussions in this Society in former years show, after analyz- 

 ing the results, that Yellow Bellflower apples must be grown in sandy 

 lands to get much fruit ; or at least on dry knolls, and not in rich SAvales 

 of black muck or in the vicinity of barnyards. 



The same distinction applies to the Chestnut grown as timber. 

 Observing this, it is probable that both trees can be grown successfully 

 in nearly every county in the State, with a little shelter for the apple trees 

 in the northwestern part of the State; and so likewise of other varieties 

 of trees which show decided preferences in adaptation to soils. 



Great differences in results have been observed, in growing certain 

 varieties of pears, between South Pass and Villa Ridge, points thirty 

 miles apart. A careful examination of the subject shows a difference at- 

 tributable to soil and another that is due to climate.- The pears at Villa 

 Ridge incline to rusty coats. 



The difference in elevation of these two points has been noticed. 

 The difference in soil is that the soil of ViUn Ridge is a fine, deep loess, 

 resting on a coarse gravel, giving excellent drauiage, while that of South 



