Introduction to the Principles of Soil Fertility 



1763 



(b) The growth and accumulation of plants to form peat and muck soils. — 

 Many small areas of these are scattered throughout the State, usually 

 in swampy places. 



(c) The transportation, sorting, and deposition of soil material by water. — 

 This includes stream bottoms, and material laid down by lakes and by 

 the ocean. Such soil is always stratified, or banded, each layer with 

 nearly one size of 

 material. Much of the 

 best land in New York 

 belongs in this group. 

 It includes the rich 

 river and creek bot- 

 toms, the clays and 

 sandy loam soils of the 

 larger valleys and 

 adjacent to nearly all 

 the lakes, and the 

 greater part of Long 

 Island. 



(d) The transpor- 

 tation, sorting, and 

 deposition of soil 

 material by wind. — 

 This includes sand 

 dimes, and probably 

 also great areas of fine 

 soil in the Middle West, 

 called loess. There is 

 no such soil in New 

 York. 



{e) The mixing and 

 transportation of so il 

 material by glacial ice.— 

 ing nearly all of New 



Fig. 7. — Diagram representing a section of stratified 

 (layers) soil deposited by water. The different sizes of 

 particles that make up each layer were sorted out by flow- 

 ing water. The more rapid the flow, the larger is the 

 size of the particles deposited. Clay is formed only in 

 very quiet water 



- The northern half of the United States, includ- 

 York, was at one time, ages ago, covered by a 

 great mass of ice that pushed down from the North. The influence of 

 this experience on our soils was profound, and accounts for the great 

 variety of rock usually found in our soils and for their heterogeneous 

 nature. Nearly all the hill land belongs in this group. It includes 

 practically the entire State above an elevation of eight hundred to one 

 thousand feet, and considerable areas below that elevation adjacent to 

 Lake Ontario. It has a great variation in agricultural value, depending 

 on its thickness, the amount of stone, and the kind of rock from which 

 it was formed. Such soils are without layers or stratification. 



