10 ADVANTAGES OF KENTUCKY. 



Topographical conditions in Kentucky combine with the geological 

 ones to enhance the value of her soils and promote her agriculture. 

 Taking the general level of the territory of the State, and disregarding 

 the secondary and local elevations and depressions, it presents a gradual 

 slope of the country, from the highest summits or ridges on the south- 

 east, where some of these waves of the Allegheny range attain two to 

 three thousand feet above sea level, down to the lowest part of the 

 State, in the southwest prolongation, where it is only about three hun- 

 dred and fifty feet above the sea, giving good drainage, and a sufficient 

 fall in her rivers. 



This is a most important consideration to the agriculturist. No ter- 

 ritory on the whole continent is better drained, naturally, than that of 

 Kentucky. Every tiller of the soil is aware that no successful cultivation 

 can be carried on upon an imperfectly drained soil. In this important 

 particular, also, is Kentucky soil superior to that of much of the coun- 

 try in the prairie region of the Northwest, where sloughs and ponds and 

 little lakes often interrupt the continuity of profitable cultivation, and 

 produce malaria. 



In other countries and States great expense is of necessity incurred 

 by the land-owner in rendering his soil productive by underdraining; but 

 in extensive regions in Kentucky, where some of her richest soils rest on 

 limestone beds, nature has provided a most extensive system of under- 

 draining; so that in the Blue Grass Region, so-called, and in that of the 

 cwernous sub-carboniferous limestone, a swamp or slough is of most 

 rare occurrence, and artificial underdraining is not generally necessary 

 for the removal of surplus surface water. Moreover, most of the rivers 

 of Kentucky during the long ages in which the rock strata have been 

 elevated above the sea, have worn their beds down far below the level of 

 the intervening table- lands, and hence natural drainage is almost every- 

 where good and sufficient. 



Meteorological conditions in Kentucky are also quite favorable to agri- 

 culture. The annual rain-fall never falls much below forty inches, and 

 sometimes is more than fifty inches, in which respect it has greatly the 

 advantage of the great Northwest. Here the warm winds from the Gulf 

 of Mexico, mingling with the colder northwardly winds, are made to 

 deposit their moisture in abundance, with only occasional droughts in 

 the hotter portion of the year; while over the vast unbroken slope of 

 the prairies of the northwestern country the air currents from over the 

 distant oceans give out but a scanty supply of this essential fluid, water,, 

 and as we go farther and farther west, even this gradually fails, so that 



