AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES 151 



common grass that not only overspreads the perma- 

 nent pasture land but encroaches into the alfalfa and 

 mixed hay meadows. Its presence and growth is a 

 good index to the native character of the soil. In 

 Wayne, Cayuga, Onondaga and Madison -counties, 

 and the southern slope of the Mohawk, there is much 

 steep land that is otherwise good soil, being the cal- 

 careous glacial till laid into drumlin ridges or eroded 

 into narrow deep valleys. These make admirable 

 blue-grass pasture land. A little further south the 

 limestone outcrops of the Niagara and particularly 

 the Helderberg formations that have a thin pocketed 

 soil covering, the Honeoye stony loam soil, are left in 

 pasture. Up the St. Lawrence and in the Hudson 

 Valley are smaller areas of calcareous pasture-soil 

 associated with the Trenton-Calciferous limestones. 

 The light sandy areas of the lake plains are often oc- 

 cupied by a poor quality of pasture but more often 

 are in timber. The higher hills of southern and 

 eastern New York are largely devoted to pasture, the 

 cultivated crops occupying only about 10 per cent and 

 all tame crops not over half of the area. In that 

 region is much pasture of poor quality. Over large 

 areas the soil is so depleted that Kentucky blue-grass 

 does not occur and its place is taken in part by the 

 smaller-growing Canada blue-grass (Poa compressa) 

 which makes good feed but " small picking." In 

 the last stage even the Canada blue-grass is crowded 

 out and fails to maintain itself against the advances 

 of wild strawberry, devil's paint brush, white daisy, 

 red sorrel, and ferns that make up the bulk of the 



