60 
SOIL SURVEY OF JACKSON COUNTY 
5. The use of a heavy roller to compact the soil is a prac¬ 
tical necessity in the cultivation of Peat lands. 
It is suggested for those who desire to undertake the devel¬ 
opment of a Peat farm, in any region but have never had 
experience with this type of land, that it would be a good plan 
to rent such a farm for a year or two or possibly serve an ap¬ 
prenticeship on some successful peat farm. This would make 
possible getting valuable experience without making a large 
investment. 
ROUGH STONY LAND 
Rough stony land includes rock exposures, cliffs, and land 
which is too steep and rough to plow or cultivate. It may be 
considered non-agricultural, as it is of value only for the small 
amount of timber and pasture it supplies. 
This type occupies a large part of the steep walls bordering 
the valleys and forms a border between the valley bottoms and 
the high land of the ridges. The type is developed as narrow 
bands many miles in extent, winding in and out of the valleys 
and coves, but confined to the steep slopes. A part of the 
type occurs as narrow ridges upon which areas of soil too 
small to be mapped are sometimes found. The bluffs and cliffs 
are highest along the western border of the county, and fre¬ 
quently reach an elevation of two to three hundred feet above 
the valley bottoms along the sides of which they occur. The 
ridge tops are also wider here than elsewhere, and range in 
width from one-quarter to one-half of a mile. The elevation of 
the ridge tops range from one hundred and fifty to two hundred 
feet above the valley floor throughout most of the interior of 
the western part of the county. 
The rough stony land type also includes isolated mounds, 
hills, and ridges of sandstone rocks rising above the compara¬ 
tively level plane of the eastern part of the county. None of 
these rough stony areas, such as Saddle Mound, Bruces Mound, 
or Stanley Mounds have any tillable land on their summits. 
Rough stony land is quite uniformly distributed throughout 
the western portion of the county and is intimately associated 
with Knox silt loam, the steep phase of this type, and also with 
some of the Boone types. The greater portion of the rock con¬ 
sists of the Potsdam sandstone, although there is also some 
granite rock exposed along the bed of the Black River. 
