State Convention—The Soil of Wisconsin. 357 
from the wash of our decomposed rocks and finely comminuted 
soils. 
It has not been a purpose in the preparation of this paper to 
enter into any minute chemical discussion of our soils, or their 
special deficiencies in any locality, but rather to show their origin, 
and the probable reason for the absence of former fertilizing ele¬ 
ments in their composition. The gypsum or plaster-beds outcrop¬ 
ping in Michigan never existed here; and still primeval waters may 
have held the sulphates, etc., in suspension, and to some extent 
have added that element of fertility to portions of the State. The 
salt-deposits of the Saginaw basin have no representative in Wis¬ 
consin, and yet it may be presumed our earlier soils did not lack 
that fertilizer for ages, after the surface emerged from the sea. So, 
also, large areas of territory west of our boundary, whose surface- 
deposits are much later than ours in the geological scale, are now 
known as alkali plains or deserts, as that salt is found in excess, 
and in such cases is fatal to vegetation. Yet, in proper proportion, 
no fertilizer could be more valuable or desirable; and it is by no 
means improbable, if the experiment were fairly tried, that we 
might find in this material a substitute almost equally valuable with 
guano, for the production of cereal crops. The mighty tombs of 
the tertiary epoch—the terrestrial and fluvital bone-deposits, min¬ 
gled with marine and fresh-water shells, which abound in such pro¬ 
fusion all over the great plains, may yet be mined for their abound¬ 
ing phosphates; and it would seem of each of the enumerated fer¬ 
tilizers, that they would have special value and application to the 
soils of Wisconsin—that continental supplies of everything fitted 
to agriculture are complete in themselves, and only need intelligent 
use to accomplish every desirable, and perhaps profitable result. 
We must, indeed, replace the soil-elements which have leached 
away, and thus create new conditions and combinations of fertility. 
In this way our sand barrens may be redeemed, our clays renovated, 
and the surface-soils stimulated to new vigor and doubled fertility. 
* V 
Our larger river valleys had also been eroded before the drift- 
epoch. The Mississippi, Wisconsin, and channels of all our interior 
rivers conveyed away the surplus waters of our territory to the sea 
from the very dawn of life upon the globe. The glacial ocean 
submerged, without obliterating them. As a consequence, or effect, so 
far as examinations have been made on the western slope of the 
