'356 Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
granitic rocks by no means produce deserts. The face of the coun¬ 
try, too, is marked by dykes ot igneous rock, arranged in pretty 
regular swells or elevations, running nearly east and west, usually 
between which are found the basins of those innumerable marshes 
and lakes which so stud the surface of this lacustrine, not to say 
hyperborian region. The dyke-surface furnishes a generally rich 
soil, made up in the main of decomposed feldspar, etc., and it cannot 
be doubted that such marshes as may in time be drained in that sec¬ 
tion, will be found exceptionally productive when subjected to the 
plow. Indeed it can be said of northern Wisconsin as a whole, that it 
is a far more promising field for farm industry than has generally been 
suspected, and its grain-crops may yet vie in quantity and quality 
wfith any or all other sections of the great west. 
Of all our subsoils in all divisions, and to some extent surface- 
soils, it may be said in a general way, that they have been too long 
subjected to a washing or leaching process, to have retained ail the 
more valuable elements for cereal crops. Every rain-drop that has 
fallen and percolated through the strata and returned toward the 
sea, has abstracted its little mite from the aggregate mass, and de¬ 
posited it upon the lower continental levels. Wisconsin is among 
the oldest, if not the oldest, geological land-mark in North Amer¬ 
ica; and, dating from the primary rock, has been longest elevated 
above the seas in probably every epoch. Geologists are agreed 
that since its submergence under Azoic waters, solid masses of its 
stratified deposits, over hundreds of square miles, have been melted 
down, as it were, and the whole material transported away to the 
depth of from three hundred to four hundred feet vertically, by no 
more active agencies than summer rains, winter snows, and occa¬ 
sional tempests incident to the latitude. By this silent, simple, 
and long-acting process, the past rich sub-tropical soil has K been 
doubtless all removed, as no certainly well-defined remains are now 
to be found; and the evidence of its former existence can only be 
demonstrated by the fossil bones of the huge mammalian races 
that could not have lived unless under much warmer conditions of 
climate. The past wealth of our soil has gone away to enrich 
other sections, and what is left may be regarded rather as a refuse 
than the original and probably repeatedly changed material. All 
the territory bordering the Mississippi River below* us, has grown 
