SOILS. 781 



drought. The silt with loosest texture is usually found on the borders of 

 the valleys. In places its coarseness is such that it might ]Derhaps be better 

 termed a sand, though the term loam is more commonly applied to it by 

 the residents. Its texture is so open as to render it very productive. 



The silt which covers the residuary clays in unglaciated parts of the Ohio 

 Basin is on the whole sufficiently loose textured and sufficiently varied in 

 chemical constituents to afford a fertile soil. It remains only in small 

 patches on the uplands, but is extensively preserved in the lowlands 

 and abandoned valleys of southeastern Ohio and neighboring parts of 

 West Virginia and Kentucky. 



PEATY OR ORGANIC SOILS. 



The peaty and organic soils occur in basins or in poorly drained tracts 

 where the rank vegetation becomes submerged at certain seasons and is 

 thus prevented from atmospheric decay. When drained, the peat being 

 allowed to ripen and become warm, these bogs will in many instances 

 yield large crops of potatoes, onions, celery, and other garden truck. 

 These bogs, which for years stood as waste laud, are thus becoming a 

 productive class of soil. 



Note. — It has been thought best to attempt no special discussion in this 

 monograph of the wells and other water supplies of the region covered, for the 

 Survey has already published several special papers on these subjects. The water 

 supplies of Indiana and Ohio have received a general discussion by the present writer 

 in Part IV of the Eighteenth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey, 

 and the wells of Indiana have been treated in some detail in Water-Supply and Irri- 

 gation Papers Nos. 21 and 26. Orton has discussed the rock waters and the flowing 

 wells of Ohio in Part IV of the Nineteenth Annual Report, and Rafter has included 

 western New York in his discussion of the water resources of New York in Water- 

 Supply and Irrigation Papers Nos. 24 and 25. In addition to the material in the 

 papers just mentioned many well sections and other data concerning water supplies 

 may be found in the present report, chiefly in connection with the discussion of the 

 structure of the drift. 



