54 An Account of the Soil [pt. i 



Soils thus charged with salts are called Alkali soils ; they 

 occur sometimes in patches and sometimes in great 

 areas, but are always dreaded alike by cultivators and 

 travellers. For as they dry the wind blows them up 

 into the eyes and mouth and nostrils till the membranes 

 smart again ; they carry no broad-leaved vegetation and 

 they yield no drinking water. Patches in cultivated 

 fields are marked by the failure of the plant. The soil 

 is curiously mottled in appearance : it forms hard white 

 lumps round which black water collects or dries to leave 

 a black crust behind. It is hard on top but often mushy 

 below, especially in irrigated regions, and after you have 

 kicked away the surface layer you come into a thick 

 stodgy clayey mass. Proper drainage and in certain 

 circumstances treatment with gypsum have done much 

 to reclaim these lands. 



Moving eastwards and northwards there is a rather 

 moister belt with more grass and less alkali, but the 

 vegetation is still wiry or leathery and there is no 

 great amount of organic matter in the soil. These are 

 the steppe soils which can be found in parts of the 

 Western States and of Alberta. Alkah spots still 

 occur, and Fig. 14 shows one on a farm at Fremont, 

 Nebraska. 



Still further eastwards and northwards is a zone of 

 higher rainfall where the conditions were such that 

 organic matter accumulated to a very marked extent 

 in the soil. Here arose the wonderful black soils on 

 which so much wheat is grown, especially developed in 

 Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, in IMinnesota and 

 other Middle Western States. 



Elsewhere, however, the black soil is not seen, but the 

 loess, a wind-carried soil derived from glacial drift and 



