SOIL SURVEY OF LOUISA (BOUNTY, IOWA. 41 



inches passes into a silty clay of the same color and mottling, this 

 material continuing throughout the 3-foot section. In some places 

 the subsoil has a uniform yellowish-brown color. In a very few 

 areas, too small to be mapped separately, a shallow layer of sand 

 has been deposited over tlie surface. In many places the subsoil, 

 as in the other types of this series, contains considerable sand, giving 

 it in some cases a sandy clay texture. In this condition the type 

 resembles the soils of the Cass series, which difter from the Wabash 

 only in having a subsoil lighter in texture than the surface soil. 



The Wabash silty clay loam occurs in areas of varying sizes, many 

 of them large, in the first bottoms of tlie Iowa and Mississippi liivers 

 and to a less extent in narrow strips in the small stream bottoms. 

 Natural drainage is only fair, but is easily improved by artificial 

 means. All of the type is subject to overflow unless protected by 

 levees. 



This is one of the most extensive of the bottom-land types. It 

 occupies the greater part of the bottoms in the vicinity of Oakville. 

 Part of the type south of Port Louisa and north of the Iowa River is 

 forested and not in cultivation. With this exception, almost all 

 the type in the river bottoms is farmed. Like the Wabash silt loam, 

 it is preeminently a corn soil. When well drained it is very produc- 

 tive. It is farmed in the same way and gives about the same yields 

 as the Wabash silt loam. On account of its heavier texture, it 

 should not be worked when wet, as clodding and bakmg result. 

 That part of the type occurring in the small stream bottoms is gen- 

 erally used as pasture. 



Land of this type ranges in price from $75 to $100 an acre for 

 areas that are poorly drained or subject to overflow to $275 an acre 

 for the best improved and best located farms. 



WABASH CLAY. 



The Wabash clay is a black silty clay, with a depth of 10 inches, 

 underlain by a dark-brown silty clay mottled with bluish gray. 

 This soon changes to dark drab mottled with rusty brown, and the 

 same color accompanies an increasingly heavy texture to the bottom 

 of the 3-foot section. The lower subsoil is very compact. 



In places the dark-brown to black color continues with slight 

 mottling to the bottom of the 3-foot section. On the east margin of 

 what was formerly Klum Lake, 2 miles northwest of Port Louisa, 

 but which is now traversed by a drainage ditch, there is a sloping 

 bank 8 to 10 feet high overlain by about 6 inches of very fine sand. 

 But for its small extent this would have been mapped as a distinct 

 type. 



The Wabash clay occurs onl}" in the first bottoms of the Iowa and 

 Mississippi Rivers, and chiefly along the latter stream. Many of the 



