4 



Relations of Geology to Agriculture 



twelve bushels an acre leaves a profit upon the labour and capital 

 expended. But the thin black virgin soils which cover them 

 soon deteriorate. Deeper ploughing does not permanently restore 

 them, and the knowing cultivator now sells his improved lot to a 

 new comer, and betakes himself to another virgin tract which the 

 tide of emigrant population is only beginning to reach. 



Fourth, Crossing the prairie or chalk down, he comes again to 

 a sudden rise in the country, over which cheerful forests of hroad- 

 leaved trees extend — of oaks, hickory, &c., and a scattered ad- 

 mixture of pines. He is now on the older rocky formations, of 

 which the first slopes of the Alleghanies consist. Mica-slate, 

 gneiss, and granite, here mingle their debris to form a character- 

 istic red, clayey, but friable soil, which crumbles readily, and, 

 from the nature of the climate, admits of a husbandry approach- 

 ing more to that of our English farmers. 



The marked features of soil and vegetation which our traveller 

 thus perceives entirely coincide with as distinctly marked geolo- 

 gical features. This is seen in the following section of the coast- 

 line in question, from the sea to the mountains. The letterpress 

 below the section indicates the geological formations — that placed 

 above it indicates the natural vegetation and the crops which 

 grow best upon each. 



No, I. 



Eice Sugar Pine forests, 

 and and Sandy barrens 

 cotton, tobacco 



Dry chalk downs. 

 Treeless prairies. 



Georirian wheat. 



' Broad-leaved forests. 

 General husbandry. 



Sea. Post tertiary, 

 and alluvial. 



Primary metamorphic 

 rock and granite. 



In this section a close general relation is seen between the 

 changes in geological and agricultural character which appear 

 on the several successive terraces or flats of land across which 

 the traveller proceeds on his way from the shores of the Atlantic 

 to the slopes of the Alleghany Mountains. Where the most 

 recent or alluvial loams and rich clays end, there the tobacco, 

 Indian corn, and even wheat culture, for the time, ends also. 

 The tertiary sands belong to a more ancient epoch, and to them 

 are limited, by a strictly defined boundary on each side, the dark 

 pine forests which are so striking a feature of the country. On 

 the older chalk, again, the treeless prairie and flinty wheat country 

 is as distinctly limited by the formations on either hand ; and 



Michigan farmer who invited me to visit him, that he had 400 acres under wheat,^ 

 and reaped with a machine. The average produce of the whole of this State of 

 Michigan is only lOi bushels of wheat per acre. 



