SOILS AND THEIR COMPOSITION. 167 



gravel such land often becomes very productive. Where the peat is 

 not more than five or six inches deep, by letting down the plow and 

 bringing up two or three inches of subsoil, a very productive soil is 

 obtained. But few attempts have been made in this country as yet 

 to reclaim deep peat bogs and marshes, and where tried has been 

 followed with rather poor success. Where land is cheap it is 

 doubtful if it can be made to pay. Where the peats can be flowed 

 in winter they will produce large crops of sedges and water grasses 

 without any attention, and the hay from such grasses may be fed 

 with provender quite profitably. 



Alluvial soils are those which have been brought down by rivers 

 and streams and deposited at low places along their banks and near 

 their mouths. They consist of the finest particles of the soil on the 

 hills from which they have been washed and usuall}- a large amount 

 of vegetable matter and much of the soluble parts of the upland 

 soils in solution with water which by chemical changes are again 

 precipitated as solid matter. Where such lands are covered by 

 water annually, leaving a new coat of sediment each year, they are 

 inexhaustable and where the climate is favorable, as in the delta of 

 the Nile and the Ganges, large crops have been grown for thousands 

 of years with very little cultivation and no manuring. But alluvial 

 lands, which we call intervale, and Western people bottom-land, 

 which overflow only for a short time during high freshets, require 

 better cultivation. When properly treated they are very productive 

 lands. Alluvial soils are usually in better mechanical condition 

 than any other lands. The particles are fine, seldom become hard 

 or adhesive, allowing the water a ready passage downward while 

 absorbing or retaining enough for the use of the plants. All these 

 soils are more or less mixed and blended with each other so that 

 only small spots here and there show any one of these soils named 

 with all of their characteristics. 



The productiveness of land depends on climate, constituent 

 elements and mechanical condition. Over climate the farmer can 

 have but little control. He can, however, lengthen the season by 

 draining wet soils, and increase the warmth by adding muck or 

 other dark matter to absorb the heat of the sun. If one or more of 

 the necessary elements are wanting, he can supply them, as all of 

 these elements may be found somewhere in nature and can be 

 reduced to proper conditions and brought to the place where wanted 

 and applied to the land. 



