36 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



climate. A typical section taken under a forest cover or one of 

 heath shrubs shows beneath the peaty humus a layer of leached-out, 

 whitish gray sand of varying thickness and underlying it a charac- 

 teristic yellow to rusty brownish iron-stained sand becoming lighter 

 in color and fading into gray as the depth increases. Where the 

 humus blanket has been denuded for one cause or another these 

 bleached sands support a correlated heath vegetation resembling 

 that of certain peat land areas. The soils appear to be unsuitable 

 for ordinary farming practices. 



Not infrequently the proportion of ferruginous constituents is 

 found to be much more considerable along the margins of water- 

 logged peat lands, while in other cases a bed of bog iron may occur 

 at no great depth below the surface peaty debris. In the central 

 portions of the peat land the iron salts in a precipitated form are as 

 a rule not present. Before deciding on a drainage or utilization 

 project it is important, therefore, to ascertain the location, area 

 and thickness of the ferruginous layers and to determine the 

 chemical nature of the constituents. In origin and formation they 

 are post-glacial, i. e., a relatively recent contamination, and it is 

 of the highest importance that their further development either as 

 black sand, bog iron, or iron pan, should be checked by suitable 

 remedial measures. 



It is well known that under water-logged conditions, disintegrat- 

 ing organic matter and carbonated waters have a marked dis- 

 solving power upon minerals of rocks and soils and hence are very 

 potent factors in leaching processes. Leached soils are compara- 

 tively poor in mineral plant constituents, especially in lime, 

 potash, and iron salts; leached peat lands are usually acid in reac- 

 tion, and require therefore fertilizers and the operations of liming 

 or marling to produce the agriculturally desirable qualities of a 

 fertile peat land. The humid climate of the New England states 

 is very favorable to leaching processes and especially so in the 

 presence of organic matter over porous sandy sub-soils. It appears 

 that with the gradual increase in the mass of peat materials, ac- 

 cumulating since the glacial period on uplands and in lowland areas, 

 widespread changes have been brought about from disintegrating 

 peat by the waters which contained organic colloidal complexes in 

 suspension and moved upward, downward or laterally, according 



