192 
This is our warm light sandy soil, near the lake; it works free and 
easv under the plow or spade, either in wet or dry weather. It would 
require but two or three crops without manuring to exhaust this ‘thin 
land/ It makes a good foundation for gardens. With an extensive ap¬ 
plication of leached ashes, one of the best manures for sandy land, 
stable manure, and ‘swamp muck,’ it makes a fine soil for almost any 
crop. 
I will add the analysis of a portion of soil, taken from the middle of 
a field, belonging to Walter Cooley, three miles north of Racine, which 
has produced nine heavy crops of corn, and one of oats in succession, 
without either rest or manure : 
Water of absorption. 12.5 
Humus. 12.0 
Salts of lime. 6.3 
Calcareous gravel. 4.0 
Alumina. 20.2 
Silicious sand. 45.0 
100.0 
This fine surface soil extends from one foot to eighteen inches deep, 
and is underlaid at the depth of from four to eight feet by a spongy 
limestone. In appearance, and most essentials it differs but little from 
our analysis No. 4. Here is sand, lime, clay and organic matter finely 
blended ; composing a soil capable of resisting, for a considerable time, a 
destructive system of agriculture. When will farmers learn it to be for 
their interest, to keep good land good, and make poor land better ? instead 
of making good land poor, and poor land worthless—it is quite as ab¬ 
surd, and economical, to exhaust land by continual cropping, and with¬ 
holding nourishment until the land can no longer produce a crop without 
it, before we resort to manuring, as it would be to starve a fat animal un¬ 
til it become poor, before we supply it with proper food. 
THE INORGANIC SUBSTANCES IN SOILS-SAND AND CLAY. 
Sand .—Silicious sand is the principal constituent in most soils. When 
analyzed it is found to consist of silica and oxygen in nearly equal pro¬ 
portions. .Silica forms an average of at least from fifty to eighty per cent, 
of all arable lands. It forms the skeleton of the soil, rendering it per¬ 
meable to moisture, heat and light—the three great promoters of rege- 
