RECOGNITION OF CHARACTER OF SOILS. 



503 



region of the Pacific Coast as in the Atlantic States, on the 

 prairies of the Middle West, and of the Gulf Coast. The ex- 

 perienced farmer recognizes this habit of the tree-growth as a 

 sign of good land, and the reverse, viz., trees of lank, tall and 

 thin growth, as evidence to the contrary, from the Atlantic to 

 the Pacific. 



Cotton Plant. The cotton plant affords very striking evi- 

 dences of this influence of lime. On the bottom lands of a 

 creek in Rankin county, Mississippi, the writer found a 

 " patch " of cotton with luxuriant stalks reaching above the 

 head of a man on horseback, but almost devoid of " squares " 

 or blooms. The soil was very dark and rich-looking, but was 

 derived from a non-calcareous tertiary terrane surrounding the 

 heads of the stream. A few rods below, the latter crosses the 

 line of a calcareous terrane, from which copious marly debris 

 have been washed down on the bottom soil. Here the cotton 

 was just half as high as above, and thickly covered with 

 squares, blooms, and bolls. 



Another similar example was noted on the Chickasawhay 

 river, in \Yayne county. Miss. \Yhere that stream flows 

 through the non-calcareous, lignitiferous area of the tertiary 

 formation, its bottom lands bear cotton crops of medium pro- 

 ductiveness only, the stalks being of the usual height of about 

 three feet, and only fairly boiled. But a short distance below 

 the point where the soft marls of the marine tertiary are cut 

 into by the stream, the cotton plants on the bottom lands are 

 from 1 8 to 20 inches high only, closely branched, and literally 

 thronged with cotton bolls, so that the fields appear a solid 

 mass of white. The only objection urged against this land is 

 that to pick such cotton ''breaks the backs" of the pickers. 

 The tree growth of the bottom, of course shows a correspond- 

 ing change. 



Lime Favors Fruiting. In connection with the obvious 

 changes of form and stature caused by the presence of an 

 abundant supply of lime carbonate in soils, there is another 

 that has been long noted in cultivation, but is no less striking 

 in the native vegetation. The abundant fruiting of oaks on 

 such lands as compared with the same species on non-cal- 

 careous soils is a matter of common note in the Mississippi 



