T549, 550] monroe prairie soil. 203 



Insoluble Matter 71539 



Pot.sh 0542 



Soda 0.230 



Lime 1075 



Magnesia 0.77 1 



Brown Oxide of Manganese 016 



Peroxide of Iron 5 419 



Alumina 13 153 



Phosphoric Acid 051 



Sulphuric Acid 0.036 



Organic Matter and Water 6.992 



99.945 

 This underclay is undoubtedly poorer in the nutritive ingredients of plants, 

 than the higher portions of the stratum, in which they have accumulated from 

 the vegjtation of miny years, being, at the same time, tenaciously retained by 

 the heavy surface soil. The latter probably approaches nearer, in composition, 

 to the soil of the terti try prairie (1[744). The composition of the above sabsoil 

 is still, however, that of agood average soil, and suggests at once the importance 

 of affording the roots of plants as much opportunity as possible to penetrate 

 desp'y into the soil ; the more so as the large amount of alumina which in this 

 instance pissed into solution (compare in this respect the analysis of the equally 

 clayey fieivy Flatwoods Soil, 1f571) seems to indicate that the ingredients con- 

 tained are, through the action of the lime in the mass (1T437, 445), to a great 

 extent in an available condition. 



54'. While it would be premature to attempt to discuss more 

 specially the relations of the soil and subsoil of the prairies, until 

 further analyses shall have been mide, the data already obtained. 

 are sufficient to give some important hints concerning the cultiva- 

 tion o! the prairie soils of the region before us. They are almost 

 throughout very heavy soils, and what has been said in general 

 regarding these (4U2 1 , ff.), applies pre-eminently to the prairies of 

 N. E. Mississippi. Unlike the heavy Flatwoods soil, however, the 

 prairie soil and subsoil, when they dry after a thorough wetting, 

 crumble into small fragments, so that, on a sunny day, one unac- 

 quainted with the nature of the soil might suppose that the crumbly 

 or powdery soil before him was of quite a light character. The 

 cause of this properly seems, to some extent, to lie in the lims 

 contained in the soil, for it is observed to exist in most of 

 the c ilcareous clays of the State (II 203 ; LSI), and causes the 

 formation, by the roadsides in the prairies, of deep washes, which, 

 otherwise one is accustomed to see only in satidv soils. 



550. Like most heavy soils in their natural condition, those of the prairies are 

 now considered unsafe; i. e., crops suffer very severely by every extreme of wet 

 or dry, and it is difficult to obtain a " stan ", if the season is at all extreme. The 

 peculiarity above mentioned viz: that of crumbling readily whenever a change 

 from wet to dry occurs, is pre-eminently favorable to the correction of the prairie 

 soils in this rospect ; for it is evidmt that proper drainage is all that is required 

 to render the soil safe against the ordinary vicissitudes of the seasons The 

 advantages derived from the underdrainage of clay soils (1f409, 410; will bo 

 comparatively of easy attainment in the prairies. S > soon as, by this improve- 

 ment, we enable the roots of our crops to penetrate to where the prairie crawfish 

 keeps up an unfailing supply of water during the dryest seasons, we shall not 



