24 INFORMATION FOR EMIGRANTS. 



Superiority of Kentucky Soils. 



I cannot better state the difference between the soils of this State and 

 those of the Northwest than by quoting from Dr. Robert Peter, Chemist 

 of the Kentucky Geological Survey — an agricultural chemist and prac- 

 tical agriculturist of large experience : * 



Hence geologists inform us that, even in strata which had been 

 deposited or formed at the same geological time, the rock-layers at the 

 North are sometime, formed of coarse-grained, insoluble, silicious mate- 

 rial, while those farther South and West are limestones, or fine-grained 

 shales, rich in phosphates and other soluble materials. 



Another geological cause of the comparative fertility of Kentucky 

 soils is, that these rock strata, out of which they were formed, and which 

 are made up of the most finely divided or soluble materials, were raised 

 above the general surface of the primeval ocean very early in geological 

 history, and have therefore been exposed to the disintegrating influence 

 of the atmospheric agencies for immense unknown ages, so that soils 

 formed of these rocks alone have been gradually produced to a much 

 greater depth than is to be observed in almost any other country. Soils 

 thus formed, in place, out- of the rock strata on which they rest, are 

 called by writers Sedentary soils, and said to have usually little depth. 

 They are hardly known over the broad expanse of our continent north, 

 and west of Kentucky, the whole of that extensive region being cov- 

 ered by a mixed deposit of clay, sand, gravel, and boulders, called 

 the "Drift," made up of the debris of more northern rock strata, which 

 have been carried, during long periods of polar refrigeration, by the 

 immense glaciers which then covered a great portion of the Northern 

 Hemisphere. 



This mixed deposit — made up largely of coarse and hard silicious 

 materials, which so covers the country of the great Northwest that 

 scientific observers of the North have asserted that the soil is not 

 affected by its underlying rock stratum — does not seem to have crossed 

 the Valley of the Ohio river to enter Kentucky. The southern extrem- 

 ity of the polar ice-field seems to have been near the line of our latitude, 

 and the great stream of water flowing from it, carrying its gravel and 

 sand, deflected by the river valley and by the elevated table-land of our 

 ancient rocks, was turned west of our State, leaving undisturbed and 

 unburied the rich soil which had been produced in the long period during 

 which those rocks had been raised above the ocean level. 



To these fortunate geological conditions, therefore, are our Kentucky 

 soils greatly indebted for their fertility and for the extremely fine state 

 of division of their constituent particles. In the great majority of these 

 soils analyzed by the present writer, the silicious particles, left after 

 digesting the soils in chlorohydric acid, of specific gravity 1. 1, all passed 

 through a fine sieve, which had sixteen hundred meshes in the centimetre 

 square. All scientific writers on soils attach the greatest importance to 

 the relative fineness of the particles which form them. Mons. DeGas- 



*See page 9, "Advantages of Kentucky for English Immigrants," issued from the? 

 office of the Kentucky Geological Survey. 



