FREEBORN COUNTY. 



Soil. Tree* and shrubs. J 



wash from the higher ground, causing, sometimes, a loam and, sometimes, 

 a tough, fine clay, the latter particularly in those tracts that are subject to 

 inundation by standing water. On an undulating prairie, with a close 

 clay, or clayey subsoil, such low spots are apt to have a black, rich loam 

 or clayey loam, the color being derived from the annual prairie fires that 

 leave charred grass and other vegetation to mingle with the soil. The 

 same takes place on wide tracts of flat prairie. In these there may be but 

 rarely a stone of any kind indeed that is usually the case but below the 

 immediate surface, a foot or eighteen inches, a gravelly clay is always met 

 with. This at first doubtless formed the soil, the disintegrating forces of 

 frost, rain and wind, combined with the calcining effects of the prairie 

 fires, having reduced the stones and gravel to powder, leaving a finely pul- 

 verized substance for a surface soil. , In a rolling tract of country, while 

 the low ground is being filled slowly with the wash from the hills, and fur- 

 nished with a fine surface soil, the hills are left covered with a coarse and 

 stony surface soil. For that reason a great many boulders are sometimes 

 seen on the tops of drift knolls. Along streams, and about the shores of 

 lakes, the action of the water has carried away the clay of the soil and 

 often eaten into the original drift, letting the stones and boulders tumble 

 down to the bottom of the bank, where they are often very numerous. 

 Along streams they are sometimes again covered with alluvium indeed 

 are apt to be but along the shores of lakes they are kept near the beach 

 line by the action of winter ice. After a lapse of time sufficient, the banks 

 themselves become rounded off, and finally turfed over or covered with 

 trees. Thus lakes sometimes extend their limits laterally, but slowly be- 

 come shallower. 



This county is furnished with a number of very beautiful lakes. These 

 are generally in the midst of a rolling country, and some of their banks 

 are high. 



Timber. In the "survey of the county the following species of trees and shrubs were noticed 

 growing native: 



Quercus macroearpa, Miclix. Bur oak. Quercus coecinea, Wany., var. tinetoria, 



Populus tremuloides, Miclix. Aspen. Gray. Black oak. 



Ulmus Americana, .L.ipl.Clayt.), J-PiMd. \Vhiteelm. Prunus serotina, Ehr. Black cherry. 



Finis coronaria, L. American crab-apple. Carya aiuara, Nutt. Bitternut. 



Juglans nigra, L. Black walnut. Corylus Americana, Walt. Hazelnut. 



Vitis cordifolia, Michx. Frost grape. Celastrus scandens, L. Climbing bitter-sweet. 



Frunus Americana, Marshall. Wild plum. Fraxinus Americana, L. White ash. 



