A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GRASS 235 



tucky, Abraham Lincoln, was not a product of 

 this fertile region. Henry Clay was a Virgin- 

 ian. The two most eminent native blue-grass 

 men were John C. Breckinridge and John J. 

 Crittenden. It seems that it takes something 

 more than a fertile soil to produce great men; 

 a deep and rich humo.n soil is much more im- 

 portant. Kentucky has been too far to one 

 side of the main current of our national life; 

 she has felt the influence of New England but 

 very little ; neither has she been aroused by the 

 stir and enterprise of the great West. Her 

 schoolhouses are too far apart, even in this rich 

 section, and she values a fast trotter or racer 

 more than she does a line scholar. 



What gives the great fertility to the blue- 

 grass region is the old limestone rock, laid 

 down in the ancient silurian seas, which comes 

 to the surface over all this part of the State and 

 makes the soil by its disintegration. The earth 

 surface seems once to have bulged up here like 

 a great bubble, and then have been planed or 

 ground off by the elements. This wearing 

 away process removed all the more recent for- 

 mations, the coal beds and the conglomerate or 

 other rocks beneath them, and left this ancient 

 limestone exposed. Its continued decay keeps 

 up the fertility of the soil. AYheat and corn 

 and clover are rotated for fifty years upon the 

 same fields without manure, and without any 

 falling off in their productiveness. Where the 

 soil is removed, the rock presents that rough, 

 honeycombed appearance which surfaces do that 



