SOILS. 3 



cent, is rolling country, of "wliicli a considerable portion' ie 

 steeply rolling, "kettle," or "pot hole" land. 



iSoils. — Tlie greater part of this area is covered by deep gray- 

 ish clay and loam soils, bearing everywhere a forest of mixed 

 hardwoods, or of hardwoods and conifers. A narrow belt of 

 fertile "red clay" lands skirts Lake Superior and is stocked 

 with a unique mixture of conifers and hardwoods, remarkable 

 in the species which are associated and resembling more the reg- 

 ular pinery of the sandy lands than the mixed woods of the 

 loamy soils. A very variable mixture of loam and sandy loam 

 overlies the land about Green Bay, also parts of Chippewa, 

 Dunn, Barron, and Polk counties. About Green Bay this land 

 bore a very heavy forest of pine with a fair mixture of hard- 

 woods; in, the western counties part of it was openings and part 

 bore heavy pine forests. Throughout this area the presence of 

 sjnd is indicated by the characteristic white birch. Sandy 

 lands, continuous with the sands of "Waushara, Adams, and 

 Juneau counties, form the southern edge of this district through 

 Portage, Wood, Jackson, Clark, Chippewa, and Dunn counties. 

 These sandy lands are either oak and jack pine openings, i. e., 

 brush prairies scatteringly covered by low brushy oaks and 

 dense groves of small jack pine, or else the were regular pinery 

 covered by a dense stand of valuable pine, without hardwoods. 



Within the large loam land area there occur three islands of 

 sandy soil rather well defined, and in most places sharply 

 marked. One of these, the "St. Croix Barrens," extends in a 

 belt 10-20 miles wide from the northwest comer of Polk county 

 to the peninsula of Bayfield; the other a V shaped tract with 

 its southern apex near the junction of the Tomahawk and Wis- 

 consin rivers and occupying the greater part of Oneida and 

 Vilas counties, and the third a broad belt like the first, extend- 

 ing from the Menominee river to about Lake Shawano and oc- 

 cupying the central part of Marinette and a broad strip through 

 Oconto and part of Shawano counties. 



In the aggregate the four several sandy districts occupy over 

 one-fourth of the entire area under consideration; they are gen- 



