SOILS. 



19 



Other districts, represented by lowlands adjoining the lakes, and 

 to all appearance within comparatively recent times parts of the 

 lake bottoms, are covered by a stiff clay soil overgrown with elm, 

 ash, and kindred trees — as, for instance, the lower part of Saginaw 

 valley and a strip of land bordering Detroit River, from Monroe up 

 to Lake St. Clair. Properly drained, this is the richest soil in the 

 State, giving larger crops and bearing the practiced system of 

 exhaustion better than any other. But the most characteristic 

 soil of Michigan, that which makes it a wheat-producing country 

 in the first rank, is a gravelly clay soil which covers the largest part 

 of the surface in the southern half of the peninsula. It unites all 

 the qualities of a good soil, all the chemical essentials for the 

 plants which it bears in such profusion ; its molecules are a mix- 

 ture of all degrees of comminution, from the finest clay mud up to 

 the boulder, producing a proper degree of porosity, and securing 

 the retention of the necessary moisture by a constant drainage of 

 any accidental surplus of it. A certain variety of this gravelly soil 

 is full of large pebbles and boulders to a degree which makes the 

 inexperienced believe its cultivation hopeless, yet such lands give 

 generally very good returns in wheat and corn crops. 



Distributed over the country are patches of light, sandy soil, 

 which contain a sufficient proportion of argillaceous and other 

 mineral ingredients to make them fertile. The easy tillage of 

 these lands and their generally fair returns bring them into high 

 favor with the farmers. The climate of the peninsula, which is 

 the other principal factor in its productiveness, is over the 

 whole extent temperate, extremes of cold or heat being pre- 

 vented by the surrounding large lakes. From the north to the 

 southern end all the cereals can be planted with little risk of 

 failure. The northern part is somewhat colder, its vegetation 

 coming out two weeks later than in the south, and the winter 

 setting in about that much earlier, which affects somewhat the 

 raising of the more tender fruit crops, as grapes, peaches, etc. 



The grape and the peach do well in the southern part of the 

 State, and particularly near the shores of the lakes, where the foggy, 

 humid air prevents late frost, the greatest enemy of these fruits. 

 The west shore up as far as Muskegon has become famous for its 

 peaches and other small fruits. The Traverse Bay region, which 

 has been so strongly recommended as a fruit-growing country, 



