47 8 Report of the Horticulturist of the 



to be adapted to lettuce; yet the extreme coarseness of loose sand 

 is not desired. Radishes thrive in this soil, and cucumbers also 

 do well, but for the latter a little heavier soil is preferred. Those 

 who grow carnations have found a clay loam most suitable, while 

 rose culturists select the heaviest clay. On account of this pecul- 

 iarity of soil adaptation there may be seen on one side of this city, 

 the soil being sandy, a village of greenhouses devoted to vege- 

 table growing, while upon another border, whose soil is clay, flower 

 culture is equally the specialty." 



It is well known that head lettuce from Boston forcing houses 

 maintains a reputation for a high degree of excellence. Galloway 5 

 gives the mechanical analysis of a type of lettuce soil from Boston, 

 showing that it contains a relatively large amount of organic mat- 

 ter and of medium, fine and very fine sand, while there is a rela- 

 tively small amount of fine silt and clay. In the place cited Gal- 

 loway says: 



By certain processes, which it is not necessary to describe here, any soil 

 may be separated mechanically into parts, which have received certain 

 conventional names. In the mechanical analyses of soils, eight of these 

 parts are recognized as follows: 



1. Fine gravel. 5. Very fine sand. 



2. Coarse sand. 0. Silt. 



3. Medium sand. 7. Fine silt. 



4. Fine sand. 8. Clay. 



Taking any ordinary soil, for example, it may be divided into the fore- 

 going constituents, the identity of each being determined by the size of 

 the grains composing it. Thus fine gravel has a diameter of 1 to 2 mil- 

 limeters,* coarse sand, y 2 to 1 millimeter, and so on, clay being the 

 smallest, the size of the grains in this case being only 1-10000 to 5-1000 of 

 a millimeter in diameter. The analysis, in brief, is simply the mechanical 

 separation of a soil into eight conventional parts, the parts themselves 

 being fixed by the size of the grains composing them. If we make such an 

 analysis of a soil best adapted to the growth of lettuce, the Boston soil, 

 for example, we find the amounts of the various constituents as follows: 



b American Gardening, 16: 135, Apr 13, 1895. 

 * A millimeter is approximately 1-25 of an inch. 



