126 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



corner of our State to below Cape Girardeau, where the hills and the 

 Loess deposit leave off and the great level country begins. 



I would wish no one to sell out where they may be and come 

 here on my say-so, but advise all who think of changing places of resi- 

 dences to come and see for themselves. 



Holt is one of the western tier of counties, and only Atchison lies 

 between it and the Iowa line. From its northwest corner to it's south- 

 east, the Missouri river sweeps in a great and irregular curve, of per- 

 haps fifty miles. The eastern boundaiy of the county is the Nodaway 

 river, which runs a nearly straight course for perhaps thirty-five miles. 

 The fortieth parallel passes near the center of the county, and the 

 ninety-fifth meridian is just east of our eastern line. 



At the southeast corner of the county the altitude of the Missouri 

 river at high water mark is about 850 feet, while the highest point in 

 the county is nearly exactly 300 feet higher. 



THE AREA 



Of Holt county is a little more than 300,000 acres. Of this area per- 

 haps 60,000 acres are bottom land, mostly prairie. Nearly one-half is 

 high rolling prairie, while the remaining 90,000 acres is timbered hill 

 country. 



THE SOIL OF HOLT COUNTY 



May be divided into at least four varieties, and these again into endless 

 variations. The material of the high prairie in the central and northern 

 part of the county, the Loess hills, which for the whole length of the 

 county lie next to the Missouri bottom. Again, the vast sweep of the 

 great bottom differs in its make up from each of the two first named, 

 and all of these from the Nodaway bottom. 



To form the trenches where now lie the bottom lands of the Mis- 

 souri and of the Nodaway, the forces long ago took away the loess — 

 thd sediment that was left over all else when the great lake was 

 drained, removed the thin and varying sheet of drift, and scooped far 

 down into the material that had been deposited at the bottom of the 

 later oceans. But between the two river valleys and on either side of 

 both, the strata of rocks and of shales, left perhaps by the very last 

 ocean, are the visible foundation of our hills. 



Geology suggests a valuable bed of coal 300 to 400 feet below the 

 waters of the Missouri, and probably extending under all of Holt county. 



The material of the ocean beds has been much disturbed, and 

 enters into the composition of our soils. In the southeastern part of 

 Holt county this formation is well exposed, and every stratum is easily 

 accessible for a perpendicular height of more than 200 feet. 



