&ORTH-CAROLINA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, 4:7 



is necessary that water should be retained, or that it should 

 pass through slowly. 



The fertilizers which are best adapted to a case like the 

 Swansboro' soil are green crops, peas or clover, which may 

 be ploughed in. By either crop we secure in part the end 

 we aim at, condensation of the soil or compactness, by which 

 water is retained, and by which also time is given for the 

 consummation of the chemical changes required. The water 

 being retained, the crop, whatever it may be, the plant is 

 supplied both with water and nutriment. 



But the necessary dressing of clay is always expensive, 

 even when it is near or at hand, unless indeed it can be 

 reached by the plough. There are very few cases where the 

 expense of hauling clay is ever returned in an increased 

 amount of crops. We may be able, as I believe, to point 

 out in what way given defects in a soil may be remedied. 



When that is done, it still remains a question for solution^ 

 whether the mode proposed will pay. It is evident that a 

 calculation of the cost of the mode prescribed is very impor- 

 tant, if it is to be put in execution. A garden may be put 

 into a high state of fertility, when a large cornfield cannot be 

 treated in the same mode. 



It is not easy, in the case before us, to account for the bar- 

 renness of the soil of the coast, unless we adopt the theory 

 that it is mainly owing to its mechanical condition. A soil 

 having a very close resemblance to this, at Cape Cod, in 

 Massachusetts, is quite fertile. President Hitchcock, of Am- 

 herst College, who conducted the geological survey of the 

 State, found on examination and analysis, that the blowing 

 sands of the cape owed their productiveness probably to the 

 comminuted shells, intermixed with the sand. Or, at least, 

 the sands, under a microscope, exhibited particles of shells ; 

 and hence, as the soil consisted of sand and finely commi- 

 nuted shells, its productiveness was attributed to the presence 

 of this fine lime dust commingled with the sand. But the 

 climate of Massachusetts bay is much more moist and cool 

 during the summer than the coast of Bogue sound. The sun 

 in the latter case acts with more force upon vegetables than 



