ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN S ASSOCIATION. 79 



east of the Rocky mountains, is very extensive, and now 

 ascertained to cover not less than 200,000 square miles — 

 being distributed among all the states and teritories drained 

 by the Mississippi and its branches, covering half the state 

 of Illinois and some 20,000 square miles in Montana — 

 taken as a whole, the most fertile of any class of soils on 

 this continent. Most of these soils are well adapted for 

 dairy production. The soils next in the order of their for- 

 mation are magnesia limestone of Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, 

 Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, Dakota and Mon- 

 tana, They are cotemporaneous with the Trenton, Black, 

 and Hudson river limestones of New York. The rocks 

 which underlie these are in the Mississippi valley the same 

 as in New York. The soils derived from the decomposi- 

 tion of these rocks are of great fertility and productiveness, 

 and with sufficient rainfall during the summer and fall 

 months and an equable climate, cannot be equalled on the 

 continent for their adaptability to dairying. The next for- 

 mation in its order is the Devonian. The Chemung sand- 

 stones of New York, New England, and Northern Penn- 

 sylvania are of the series of this formation. They occupy 

 the greater portion of the water-shed from Nova Scotia to 

 Ohio, when their waters discharge into the great lakes and 

 St. Lawrence, on the north, and into the Atlantic on the 

 south; being on an average about 1,600 feet above tide- 

 water ; the same elevation as the water-shed where rivers 

 at the head-waters of the Mississippi flow south, and the 

 Red and Makenzie rivers flow north. The soils of this for- 

 mation are mainly derived from decomposition of the sand- 

 stones and slate rocks, and are not as fertile as the latter or 

 " the magnesian limestone formation," but their climate, 

 owing to their elevation and the general equal distribution 

 of rainfall through the summer and fall months, makes these 

 soils the most reliable of any known on this continent for 

 dairying. The other rock formations of the Devonian sys- 

 tem are the Onondaga and Niagara limestones of New 

 York, Cincinnati limestones of Ohio and Kentucky, Cedar 

 Valley limestones of Iowa and Minnesota. All the states 

 east of the Mississippi have large tracts of land of this for- 

 mation which, as a general rule, have a soil but little infer- 

 ior to the magnesian limestone formation of Iowa, Illinois 

 and Wisconsin — and with a larger amount of carbonate of 

 lime and organic matter than any other class of soils and 



