39§ REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



It seems to me that the treatment of sand lands is one of our most urgent 

 problems. They exist in enormous quantities, they are unfit for profitable agriculture 

 on a large scale for any length of time, they are excellent for the production of forests, 

 and, in fact, actually improve under theirinfluence. Many people wonder at the fact 

 that eastern lands are no longer capable of producing the amount of grain which they 

 formerly yielded. It seems to me plain that the great store of fertility, the accumu- 

 lation of ages of forest growth, has been exhausted. We may analyze our soils with the 

 greatest of care, and add manures in large quantities, but nothing is equal to the action 

 of the forest in the restoration of fertility if the proper course of treatment is followed. 



The term "virgin soil" carries with it the notion of great fertility — fertile in that 

 it contains the decomposed detritus of the forest. There is attached to it the notion 

 that it has and can only exist once. In the old world many soils have been rejuve- 

 nated many times. In fact, it is quite the custom in many districts in Europe to cut 

 the forest, clear the land, cultivate it for a few years, and then plant it again in forests. 

 If agriculture must be practiced on sand soils, the forest should be one of the series in 

 the rotation of crops. Since sandy soil is easily shifted by the wind, and since, owing 

 to its consistency, it easily loses its fertility when exposed to the action of sun and 

 weather, and since forests love a loose, warm soil and improve in turn its quality, it 

 seems to me that the two should always be inseparably associated. 



Sand varies in nature commensurate with its manner of formation and the 

 conditions to which it has been in times past more or less subjected. It may have 

 been deposited by glacial action and afterwards shifted by the wind as in the Adiron- 

 dacks, or washed up by the' waves and then piled by the winds in dunes, as along 

 the southern shore of Long Island and in the neighborhood of Lake Ontario, or 

 deposited in beds along the banks of rivers. Sand is an indefinite term applied to 

 many materials which are often essentially different in constitution, although similar 

 in that they consist of coarse, irregular, non-coherent granules. True sand is pure 

 silica, although it is usually mixed with other materials such "as particles of shells, 

 magnetic iron, and even, as in several instances, specks of gold. 



Sand is often cemented with lime, organic matter, iron, etc., into hardpan, which 

 is often troublesome, but ordinarily it is loose and porous to a great depth. The 

 productive ability of a sand soil is very largely dependent upon the size of its granules, 

 upon which in turn depends its ability to imbibe plant-food and moisture. Sand 

 almost always looks sterile and forbidding; but it is unsafe to judge a soil for forestal 

 purposes from the appearance of its surface. A sand soil may look, in fact may be 

 absolutely sterile on the surface, and yet a few inches below be rich in plant-food. 

 The appearance of the surface of such a soil would condemn it of course for agricul- 

 tural but not for forestal purposes, because the roots of trees would soon penetrate 



