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Annual Report of the 
the sandy soil, measure for measure. These terms, as commonly 
used, really refer to adhesiveness, degree of comminution or power 
of holding water, or more properly, perhaps, to the way in which 
the soil “ works. 11 Again, the term u sandy soils 11 is supposed, even 
by persons somewhat versed in the sciences, to mean those that 
are made up of grains of quartz, or in other words are silicious, and 
hence are more or less barren. But this is not alwavs true. Some 
%/ 
sand} r soils are composed of grains of limestone, and are very fertile, 
an instance of which will he described presently. So a clay soil is 
supposed by many somewhat intelligent in chemistry, to be com¬ 
posed of aluminous material, hut this is far from always being the 
case as the term is commonly used. Many other terms have a sim¬ 
ilar vagueness. So you will pardon me if I attempt to make myself 
understood as to these points before I proceed to describe the soils 
found in eastern Wisconsin. 
The soils that I shall hereafter describe, were all, with a single 
exception, formed by the powdering or decomposition of rocks of 
various kinds. This remark of course does not apply to the vege¬ 
table matter that is mingled with the soil. The rocks were either 
ground down to a powder by mechanical means, or decomposed by 
the action of the elements. We need then to consider two things. 
1st. the degree of fineness to which the material was reduced, and 
2d. the chemical nature of the material. If the rock was simply 
reduced to small grains, we call it sand, and we do this without re¬ 
gard to its chemical nature. If the rock was quartz, we call it a 
quartz or silicious sand; if it was limestone, we call it a calcareous 
or lime sand; if it was an iron ore, we call it an iron sand and so 
on. We have all these three kinds of sand in eastern Wisconsin, 
and the difference between them is world-wide. If a man’s farm is 
sandy, it makes two or three hundred per cent, diffierence, whether 
it is silicious or calcareous sand. But more about this farther on. 
If the rock is reduced to a very fine inpalpable powder, it forms 
what would be termed a clay, although such use of the term is un¬ 
fortunate. But here again the chemical nature might be quite dif¬ 
ferent in any two given cases. It might be silicious, calcareous, 
aluminous, or otherwise. The term true clay is only properly ap¬ 
plied to this kind of material, when it is aluminal. 
To make this matter more clear, I have artificially manipulated 
these substances. 
