Secretary's Budget. 387 



with the light, sandy, sedentary soils, wliich resulted, from the 

 decomposition of the underlying sandstone. This admixture of 

 the two varieties is said to be beneficial in making the resultant 

 soil lighter and more mellow. In the southern part of the state 

 the soil is clayey, having been formed by the decomposition of the 

 clayey and shaly rocks in the near vicinity. Prof. Newberry says 

 that more than half of Ohio is covered by drift soils. In the 

 Western Eeserve the underlying rocks are sandstones such as would 

 by their disintegration give rise to very light and barren soil ; 

 whereas, as is well known, this is one of the most fertile regions ol:" 

 the state. The reason is simply this : that the poor, sandy, seden- 

 tary soil has been completely covered by a drift clay from the 

 north. In the southern half of the Eeserve the drift clay is mixed 

 with a much greater j^roiDortion of sand and gravel, and is there- 

 fore lighter and dryer. 



And so we might go on indefinitely, did time and space permit. 

 Enough has, however, been said to show that rocks and soils are by 

 no means so unlike "as they may at first appear, and to teach us that 

 the slow persistent action of plant growth, of air, water, and of 

 frost, have had far more to do with fitting the earth for man's abode 

 than we may heretofore have realized. The rush and roar of a 

 tornado,- and the convulsions of a Krakatoa, although fearful in 

 their intensity, are comparatively local in their effects. All over 

 our earth, however, the rocky hills and mountains are slowly 

 crumbling away. Too slowly, it may be, for human eye to mark, 

 but none the less surely. And the time must come when the places 

 that know them shall know them no more, but they shall have en- 

 tirely disappeared under a layer of soil and vegetable growth. — G. 

 P. Merrill, of National Museum, in Prairie Farmer. 



THE CROSS-FERTILIZATIOSr OF STRAWBERRIES. 



The idei:^ that the fertilization of berries affects the fruit as to 

 size and appearance, appears to be a new one. I do not remember 

 reading anything of such a theory until quite recently. It is not a 

 plausible theory, and my experience does not corroborate it. Mr. 

 Kogers, in the Rural of July 19, describes the different effects pro- 

 duced on the Manchester by fertilization with Miner's Prolific and 

 Sharpless. It happens that I have contiguous beds of these three 

 varieties. Here is a bed of Miner four feet wide, separated by a 

 path, a foot wide, from a similar bed of Manchester, and not en- 

 tirely separated for careless cultivation has allowed the two kinds to 

 run close together. The Manchesters here are identical with those 



