366 



Missouri Agricultural Report. 



stretches along the Missouri river from Omaha to Kansas City, 

 sometimes twenty, never more than fifty miles in width. That 

 is astounding news to most of us. It came to me as a revela- 

 tion when the figures of the actual apple production of Missouri 

 showed that eight-tenths of the apples produced in Missouri 

 are produced in this little strip of territory along the Missouri 

 river. Two counties in Northwest Missouri produced in 1912 

 more apples than all the State of Oregon, and one county just 

 across the line in Kansas marketed more than $500,000 in fruit. 



Do you ask why this strip of territory is distinguished 

 from all the lands of these states as the great apple producing 

 district? Here we face as interesting a story as horticulture 

 has to offer. 



There are two great divisions of soils in the world: One 

 comprises all of those that have been produced either entirely 

 or in part by weathering or chemical bleaching; the other is the 

 soil that has been produced from mechanical grinding up of 

 rock into particles of microscopic size. One kind of soil has 

 been produced by chemical and mechanical action; the other 

 has been produced by mechanical action only. There is but 

 one soil in this last group, and that is the true loess soil. This 

 soil may be said to be to all other soils as gold is to all other 



The best of the world's fruit soils— the loess soils of the Missouri river hills. 



