492 



SOILS. 



" table-lands " that extend through western Tennessee and Mississippi 

 into Louisiana, and have long been noted for their high production oi 

 fine upland cotton. 



Cane Hills. On the western border of the table-land region, and 

 here forming a strip only a few miles wide along the edge of the Mis- 

 sissippi bottom, but from 70 to 450 feet above it, lies the remnant of 

 what farther south constitutes a wide and important agricultural belt ; 

 the Bluff or Loess formation, locally known as " the Cane Hills." The 

 soil is largely composed of grains of sand and silt cemented by lime 

 carbonate ; it is therefore calcareous, and as on the Pontotoc ridge, 

 described above, we find here the black walnut, the tulip tree, ash and 

 others, elsewhere restricted to the alluvial " bottoms," on the ridges 

 themselves, from sixty to a hundred feet above the stream beds. 



Mississippi Bottom. At the western foot of this bluff there lies the 

 great Mississippi Bottom, with its rich soils and varied forest growth. 

 This also, however, subdivides into at least three distinct soil and vege- 

 tative zones, viz., the sandy " Frontlands," which lie on the immediate 

 banks of the great river and its main branches, and the heavy clayey 

 " Back-land " areas, whose soils are partly the product of modern 

 swamp deposits from backwaters, partly result from the disintegration 

 of strongly calcareous clays constituting the lower part of the Bluff or 

 Loess formation. A third natural subdivision is the " Dogwood ridge," 

 a narrow belt of slightly elevated land, mostly above ordinary overflows, 

 which extends diagonally from the Mississippi river to the Yazoo bottom, 

 and seems to be the continuation of " Crowleys ridge " in Arkansas. 

 Each of these soil belts has its own characteristic forest growth, as in- 

 dicated in the table below the map. 



We have here along an east-and-west line of about 200 

 miles, eleven markedly distinct zones of vegetation, readily 

 recognized as such by every farmer, and each underlaid by a 

 distinct geological terrane. It does seem as though a close 

 study of these and of the soils overlying them should lead to 

 some definite results showing the physico-chemical causes of 

 these differences. 



Lime apparently a governing Factor. The connection of 

 some of these changes in vegetation with the calcareous nature 

 of the corresponding formation has already been referred to. 

 As regards four of the eleven divisions, this is obvious even to 

 the casual observer, and is well known to the population, who 



