4 SOILS OF THE EASTERN UNITED STATES. 



region has been covered by surveys, it is probable that the comple- 

 tion of the work will show from 15,000,000 to 17,000,000 acres of this 

 single soil type within the Coastal Plain soil province. In this con- 

 nection it may be said that more than three-fourths of the entire 

 area of the Orangeburg fine sandy loam included in the completed 

 soil surveys lies in the four States of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisi- 

 ana, and Texas. 



CHARACTERISTICS OF SOIL AND SUBSOIL. 



The surface soil of the Orangeburg fine sandy loam to an average 

 depth of 10 or 12 inches is a gray or brown fine sandy loam. This 

 grades downward into a deep red sandy clay which extends to a total 

 depth of 3 feet or more and in turn may be underlain at still greater 

 depths by a stiff red clay. There usually is no well-defined boundary 

 between the fine sandy loam surface soil and the mortarlike sandy 

 clay subsoil. The latter frequently contains quite a proportion 

 of medium to coarse sand, which renders it somewhat friable 

 when partly dry. Wherever drainage is excessive, or where inter- 

 tilled crops have been grown for a long period of years without 

 proper attention to the restoration of organic matter, the surface soil 

 has a light gray color. In soils newly cleared, or upon fields where 

 the organic matter content has been maintained, the surface soil is 

 darker and usually of some tinge of brown or even chocolate. 



The Orangeburg fine sandy loam and its associated soils of the 

 Orangeburg series are easily distinguished from the soils of the Nor- 

 folk series, which are characterized by gray surface soils and yellow 

 subsoils, or from the soils of the Portsmouth series, which have a 

 dark-brown or black surface soil and gray or mottled subsoil. The 

 distinctive deep red coloring of the subsoils of the Orangeburg series 

 might be confused with that of the Greenville series but for the fact 

 that the surface soils of this latter group are distinctly red as con- 

 trasted with the gray or brown of the Orangeburg. The coloration 

 of the soils of the Guin series is light orange or pale red as dis- 

 tinguished from the deep red of the Orangeburg series. The Orange- 

 burg fine sandy loam may be distinguished from the Susquehanna 

 fine sandy loam through the fact that the subsoil of the latter type 

 is a stiff plastic red or orange clay, nearly always mottled at greater 

 depths. 



SURFACE FEATURES AND DRAINAGE. 



The general surface features of the Orangeburg fine sandy loam 

 are closely similar in all of the many areas where it has been en- 

 countered. There are minor variations, however, which have ai 

 important bearing, not so much upon the crop adaptations of the 

 soil type as upon the possibility of its use for any agricultural pur- 



