State Convention—The Soil of Wisconsin. 353 
they perished from a climate growing more and more arid and in¬ 
hospitable—an impoverished soil, long cultivated, without renova¬ 
tion—a cause, indeed, so potent as to have involved the decadence if 
not ruin of many nations since the historic period commenced. 
The general effect of civilization, indeed—a few favored regions ex¬ 
cepted—has been the destruction of every country, by the exhaus¬ 
tion of its fertility, and the waste of excessive culture, without re¬ 
turning to the soil an equivalent for what has been abstracted. 
There is not a nation of antiquity but has left behind an instructive 
lesson, in its final fate, upon this very subject. Civilized cultiva¬ 
tion, as long practiced, has been little else than a war on nature. It 
is by no means improbable that the sage deserts and alkali plains of 
the west may have, in their time, been the abode of many nations, 
and possibly suffered decadence in conditions of life long before an 
increasing altitude unfitted the region for the abode of dense and 
compact populations. The lower levels of the continent may be 
said to be even now passing through the same successive, but slow 
stages of destruction. 
But, whatever the soil of the sub-tropical, modified drift, or allu¬ 
vial eras, and however great the fertility, we at least are conscious 
that we only inherit what remains of it, with such additions as de¬ 
composed rocks have produced, or as have resulted from modifica¬ 
tions, the result of local causes. In general terms, the present 
gives us a more frigid and worse climate, and poorer soil than the 
past. Our arborescent and other vegetation have also experienced 
great decadence ; and, except in the intellectual development of 
man, animal-life mav be said to have suffered from the same cause. 
The surface of Wisconsin, as to soil, may now not improperly 
be divided into three or four divisions or districts: 
1. The area covered by the drift formation. 
2. The area not reached by glacial action. 
3. That portion in which, if limestone formations or drift-depos¬ 
its ever existed, they have been so far removed as to leave few traces 
of a former existence. And to this classification might be added: 
4. That section or sections so completel} 7 covered hy boulders as 
to obscure the original soil of whole townships, if not counties— 
taken in the aggregate—embracing, generally, the region rendered 
fertile by decomposed trap-dykes and feldspars, with intervening 
marshes and lakes. 
23- a 
