XXXVI. The Chautauqua Soil 



All of the soil in the vicinity of Chautauqua was at one time a deep, 

 rich, mellow, leaf-mold, made and preserved under the dense shade of 

 the primitive forest that engirdled the beautiful lake. Under natural 

 conditions this rich leaf-mold would have been preserved indefinitely; 

 each autumn would have added its bounty of leaves to the unwasted 

 compost. As soon as clearings were made, the leaf-mold was washed 

 away and destroyed, vanishing with remarkable rapidity, and exposing 

 the infertile subsoil below. There are at the present time only a few 

 places in Chautauqua where there are any vestiges of the original soil 

 of the forest floor. 



The soil that was originally the subsoil, but that by the clearing 

 away of the forests has become the surface soil, is known technically 

 among soil experts as " Volusia loam." It is so named because the first 

 samples to be accurately classified came from the Volusia region, in 

 this county. The Volusia loam is a light-brown soil about eight inches 

 deep. It contains a considerable quantity of finely divided shale chips, 

 popularly called " shale gravel " or " black gravel." The subsoil is a 

 yellow or mottled yellow silty loam. Both soil and subsoil contain a 

 large percentage of shale and sandstone fragments. 



This Volusia loam is the common soil in the vicinity of Chautauqua 

 and Mayville. It was formed during the Great Ice Age, through the 

 action of the glaciers. The glaciers pulverized the underlying shales 

 and sandstones. In some places near Chautauqua the glacial soil, or 

 glacial " till," is so thin that the underlying shale and sandstone are 

 reached by the ordinary three-foot soil-auger. 



Volusia loam is widely distributed in New York, Ohio and Pennsyl- 

 vania; the area mapped by the Federal Soil Survey up to the present 

 time already amounting to over one million, one hundred thousand 

 acres. The Volusia loam is but one of a large series of glacial loams, 

 and these soils are recognized to be the best general-purpose soils of 

 the northeastern United States. They are well adapted, not only to the 

 general farm crops, but also to many of the heavier truck and market- 

 garden products. 



The topography of these soils is gently undulating to rolling, insur- 

 ing fair to good drainage, although crop yields are usually enhanced 

 by tiling or ditching. In most sections where the loams are found 

 their development is usually so uniform that there is little real waste- 

 land. 



Ill 



