MrDOXOUGH COUNTY. 265 



cultivated in this latitude, without other stimulants than those contained 

 in the soil itself. The prairie soil is a dark, chocolate-colored loam, ap- 

 pearing nearly black when wet, and produces excellent crops of corn, 

 wheat, oats, barley and grass, and where a proper rotation of crops has 

 been the rule, no perceptible decrease in the annual product has been 

 observed, even on lands that have been under constant cultivation for 

 the last twenty-five or thirty years. The timbered lands are generally 

 confined to the creek valleys, and broken ridges adjacent thereto. The 

 soil on these timbered ridges is usually thin, but they, are excellent fruit 

 lands, and will produce fair crops of wheat, oats and clover, but they 

 require manuring if subjected to long-continued cultivation. These thin 

 soils are predicated upon the boulder clays, and the timber growth is 

 mainly black and white oak, and hickory; and their uneven surface does 

 not retain the vegetable and animal matters that are annually deposited 

 upon them, but, on the contrary, these are swept away by the annual 

 rains into the adjacent valleys, while on the level prairies they are 

 retained, and add from year to year their fertilizing properties to the 

 soil. The bottom lands on Crooked creek are very limited in extent, 

 and are mostly subject to overflow. They afford some fine timber, the 

 varieties of which have been enumerated on a preceding page. 



