79 
ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN’S ASSOCIATION. 
cast of tne Rocky mountains, is very extensive, and now 
ascertained to cover not less than 200,000 square miles_ 
being distributed among all the states and teritories drained 
r tip ^* ss * ss ippi an d its branches, covering half the state 
of Illinois and some 20,000 square miles in Montana- 
taken as a whole, the most fertile of any class of soils on 
this continent. Most of these soils are well adapted for 
dairy production. The soils next in the order of their for¬ 
mation are magnesia limestone of Illinois, Wisconsin Iowa 
Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, Dakota and Mon¬ 
tana. They aie cotemporaneous with the Trenton, Rlack 
and Hudson river limestones of New York. The rocks 
which underlie these are in the Mississippi valley the same 
as in New York. The soils derived from the decomposi¬ 
tion of these rocks are of great fertility and productiveness, 
and with sufficient rainfall during the summer and fall 
months and an equable climate, cannot be equalled on the 
continent for their adaptability to dairying. The next for¬ 
mation in its order is the Devonian. The Chemung sand¬ 
stones of New York, New England, and Northern Penn¬ 
sylvania are of the series of this formation. They occupy 
the greater portion of the water-shed from Nova Scotia to 
Ohio, when their waters discharge into the great lakes and 
St. Lawrence, on the north, and into the Atlantic on the 
south; being on an average about 1,600 feet above tide¬ 
water , the same elevation as the water-shed where rivers 
at the head-waters of the Mississippi flow south, and the 
Red and Makenzie rivers flow north. The soils of this for¬ 
mation are mainly derived from decomposition of the sand¬ 
stones and slate rocks, and are not as fertile as the latter or 
“ the magnesian limestone formation,” but their climate, 
owing to their elevation and the general equal distribution 
of rainfall through the summer and fall months, makes these 
soils the most reliable of any known on this continent for 
dairying. The other rock formations of the Devonian sys¬ 
tem are the Onondaga and Niagara limestones of New 
York, Cincinnati limestones of Ohio and Kentucky, Cedar 
Valley limestones of Iowa and Minnesota. All the states 
east of the Mississippi have large tracts of land of this for¬ 
mation which, as a general rule, have a soil but little infer¬ 
ior to the magnesian limestone formation of Iowa, Illinois 
and Wisconsin—and with a larger amount of carbonate of 
lime and organic matter than any other class of soils and 
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