DRIFTED SOILS. 
43 
In applying the preceding facts, it is easy to see how farms and estates should be selected 
in a primary district. The depth of soil is an important fact, as is well known, but its 
derivation is another equally important. For its determination, the outcrop of rocks upon 
hillsides may be examined, and their nature ascertained; whether their exposed or weathered 
surfaces are bleached, and softer than that of a recent fracture*; or whether they are 
crumbly, and disposed to disintegrate. If the rocks are hornblende or pyroxenic green¬ 
stone, or a coarse granite with large masses of felspar, we shall expect the soil to contain 
the alkalies or alkaline earths; and if by cultivation they become exhausted, we may 
expect that by deep or subsoil ploughing a fresh quantity can be brought to the surface 
for the use of vegetables, and thus a constant reproduction of them obtained from the 
decomposition of the coarser particles now intermixed with the deeper soil. Greenstone 
and trap, from their more ready disposition to undergo change, may be ranked among the 
best materials for a foundation soil, possessing all the requisites desired for the cultivation 
of grains and fruits. They are not so porous as the granitic sands that are termed leechy; 
nor so compact as many of the argillaceous soils, many of which retain the water in pools 
upon the surface. 
§ 5. Drifted soil. 
A farther consideration of the causes which have distributed the soil and spread the 
debris of rocks at a distance, is of some importance while treating of the northern counties ; 
as it may appear to those who are familiar with the drift or diluvial theories, that little 
reliance can be placed on our instructions for determining the character of the soil by 
observing the rocks beneath. It is true that we find the debris of distant rocks in most of 
our soils; yet we find that their essential character is, with some exceptions, derived from 
the rock near by. On the northern and northwestern slope of the highlands in Franklin 
county, many boulders of Trenton limestone maybe found, which, together with some of 
the finer matters, were brought from the Canada side, and probably this transported debris 
exerts some influence; still there is a predominance of soil from the Potsdam sandstone, 
the underlying rock of a great part of the county, particularly the northern part. In the 
neighborhood of Malone, immense drift beds have been accumulated, in which the 
boulders of this sandstone always predominate. They have also been transported south, 
and lap on to the primary masses, and modify the soil of the granite and gneiss; but when 
we penetrate deeply into this great primary region, its distinguishing characters are derived 
from the masses beneath. In some instances the drift current has left nothing but loose 
boulders, which, resisting decomposition, all the soil we now find is of modern or recent 
origin. Narrow formations, whose strike is east and west, will usually be covered with a 
more distant soil than those whose strike is north and south. Of this fact, we shall have 
occasion to speak hereafter. 
6 * 
