FARIBAULT COUNTY. 457 



Timber. Geological strufture.J 



and bluffs of the Blue Earth river through this county, and of its East fork 

 to a distance of fifteen miles above its mouth. It also forms groves or nar- 



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row belts on the borders of nearly all the lakes and creeks. With these 

 exceptions the whole county, including both its smooth areas of nearly 

 level till, and its rolling and prominently hilly tracts of the same glacial 

 drift in moraines, is prairie, destitute of trees or shrubs, and bearing 

 everywhere luxuriant grass. 



The species of forest trees found in Faribault county, in the estimated 

 order of their relative abundance, according to Mr. Alex. Halliday, pro- 

 prietor of the Verona Star mills, are bur oak, slippery or red elm, soft ma- 

 ple, box-elder, wild crab-apple, black walnut, bitternut, common poplar, or 

 American aspen, the large-toothed poplar, and cottonwood, common; black 

 oak, white or American elm, sugar maple, and June-berry, less common; 

 black cherry, white ash, hackberry, and butternut, scarce ; Kentucky cof- 

 fee-tree, rare. The species of shrubs are stated by the same authority to 

 be prickly ash, black currant, and hazel, abundant; frost grape, climbing 

 bitter-sweet, smooth sumach, thorn, rose, wolf berry, and elder, common; 

 choke-cherry, red raspberry, and prickly and smooth wild gooseberries, 

 less common; the wild red cherry, and the black ras'pberry or thimble- 

 berry, scarce. Mr. Halliday has seen cottonwoods and black walnut trees 

 in this county five feet in diameter. 



GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE. 



Faribault county has no outcrop of the bed-rocks that underlie the 

 drift, but at five places wells have penetrated the drift and gone consider- 

 able depths into rock beneath. These are at Winnebago City, Easton, 

 Minnesota Lake, Wells, and in Seely township. Their sections are as fol- 

 lows: 



Winnebago City mills, a steam flouring mill; bight about 1,095 feet above the sea: well, 230 

 feet deep; soil, 2 feet; yellow till, 18 feet; blue till, 140, containing occasional beds of sand, from 

 a few inches to five feet in thickness; stratified sand, probably modified drift filling a pre-glacial 

 valley, 40 feet; yellowish and reddish magnesian limestone, 30 feet, the tcp of this rock being ap- 

 proximately 900 feet above the sea. Two other wells in Winnebago City go 150 and 160 feet in 

 till, finding no bed-rock. 



Terhurne & Scheid; Easton; bight about 1,050 feet: well, 205 feet deep; till, 101 feet, includ- 

 ing layers of sand one to two feet thick, to rock at approximately 950 feet above the sea; consist- 

 ing of whitish limestone, 8 inches; thin-layered, gray rock, probably also limestone, 2 feet; light 

 gray sandstone, 101 feet, and extending below, coarsely granular, in some portions quite hard, 

 quickly dulling the drill. This well was made with the expectation of obtaining an artesian flow. 



