FOR ENGLISH IMMIGRANTS. 9 



The late Dr. David D. Owen, former Director of the Kentucky Geo- 

 logical Survey, placed in the writer's possession a series of samples of 

 soils which he had collected during his celebrated exploration of the 

 great Northwestern Territory for the United States Government in 

 1847-50; some of which the writer analyzed, giving the results in 

 Vol. IV, O. S., Kentucky Geological Reports. These soils, character- 

 istic of the best of this great prairie region, are mostly very dark 

 colored, sometimes almost black, from the presence of a large propor- 

 tion of organic matter, some of which is peaty or semi-bituminous — of 

 little value for plant food — derived from the decomposing remains of 

 many successive growths of grasses or aquatic plants in recent or former 

 ages; but in them all, and in some of them in very large proportion, 

 -are visible grains of quartzose sand, reducing materially the quantity of 

 " fine earth," and, consequently, the durability of these soils. While 

 the organic matters, the dark vegetable mould, give to such soils great 

 fertility at first, and cultivation is facilitated by the sandy ingredient, 

 the durability of such soils, without the aid of artificial fertilizers, would 

 be much less than that of our best Kentucky soils, which contain no 

 coarse sand, but are altogether "fine earth," made up partly of decom- 

 posable silicates. By reliable accounts the older prairie farmers find it 

 necessary even now to resort to artificial fertilizers, while on the best 

 lands of Kentucky cropping for a hundred years has not yet brought 

 about this necessity, nor will it perhaps for hundreds of years more, 

 where the soil rests on a decomposable limestone which annually gives 

 up in solution to the soil above as much essential mineral plant food as 

 may be removed from it in a judicious system of culture. 



The great extension of railroads, under the liberal donation of pub- 

 lic lands for their construction, has offered great facilities and induce- 

 ments to emigrants to occupy the northwestern territory. The railroad 

 companies have spared no pains to bring their lands into the market 

 and invite settlers, and the result is, that this broad prairie country, 

 much of which, previous to the construction of these railways, was 

 believed to be an uninhabitable desert, is now covered by the cities, 

 villages, and habitations of an energetic and prosperous population, 

 who not only raise grain and cattle enough for home consumption, but 

 actually rule the provision market of Europe. But while the bounte- 

 ous productions of the virgin prairie soil have thus made the older 

 countries tributary to the present wealth of ours, the gradual diminu- 

 tion of the annual production of grain per acre in the older settlements, 

 and the inevitable shifting of the centre of greatest grain production 

 further west to newer lands, foreshadow the event. 



