CHOICE OF A REGION 511 



of the soil of this type on the hills of New York and 

 Pennsylvania will not grow wheat or clover without much 

 expense for lime and fertilizer. It has reached the red- 

 top stage. It never was a good soil and never will be. 

 It grows fairly good crops of oats, buckwheat, and pota- 

 toes. Of course, big yields have been grown on it and can 

 be grown, but about the only really prosperous period in 

 farming it was when the farmers got most of their money 

 from cutting off the crop of white pine and chestnut. To- 

 day many of the farmers on the poorer phases of this soil 

 are not well fed. By having very large areas, it is possible 

 to make a good living. Much of the land is then kept 

 in woods and large pastures. Only the best is tilled. 



The Hagerstown loam is, in general, a rich limestone 

 soil. This particular region does not seem to be typical 

 of this soil, either in analysis or yields. This is the name 

 given to the rich limestone soils that extend from south- 

 eastern Pennsylvania through Maryland and Virginia, 

 eastern Tennessee, and northern Alabama and in the blue- 

 grass region of Kentucky. This soil should be in the class 

 of the naturally productive soils, but the sample and crops 

 in the table are not typical. 



Most of the farming regions that have the soil types 

 classed as highly productive are prosperous farming regions. 

 The Marshall silt loam is the predominating soil of the corn- 

 belt. The Bureau of Soils estimates that there are sixty 

 million acres of this soil. 



An examination of the analyses in the table shows that 

 the soils of low productivity contain much less plant-food 

 than the soils of high productivity. The differences 

 are particularly striking in the amount of phosphorus 

 and lime present. 



313. Plants as indicators of fertility. The kind and 



