478 Report or THE HORTICULTURIST OF THE 
to be adapted to lettuce; yet the extreme coarseness of loose sand 
is not desired. Radishes thrive in this soil, and cucumbers also 
do well, but for the latter a little heavier soil is preferred. ‘Those _ 
who grow carnations have found a clay loam most suitable, while 
rose culturists select the heaviest clay. On account of this pecul- 
larity of soil adaptation there may be seen on one side of this city, 
the soil being sandy, a village of greenhouses devoted to vege- 
table growing, while upon another border, whose soil is clay, flower 
culture is equally the specialty.” 
It is well known that head lettuce from Boston forcing houses 
maintains a reputation for a high degree of excellence. Galloway° 
' gives the mechanical analysis of a type of lettuce soil from Boston, 
showing that it contains a relatively large amount of organic mat- 
ter and of medium, fine and very fine sand, while there is a rela- 
tively small amount of fine silt and clay. In the place cited Gal- 
loway says: : | nae 
By certain processes, which it is not necessary to describe here, any soil 
may be separated mechanically into parts, which have received certain 
conventional names. In the mechanical analyses of soils, eight of these 
parts are recognized as follows: 
1. Fine gravel. 5. Very fine sand. 
2. Coarse sand. 6. Silt. 
38. Medium sand. 7. Fine silt. 
4. Fine sand. : 8. Clay. 
Taking any ordinary soil, for example, it may be divided into the fore- 
going constituents, the identity of each being determined by the size of 
the grains composing it. Thus fine gravel has a diameter of 1 to 2 mil- 
limeters,* coarse sand, % to 1. millimeter, and so on, clay being the 
smallest, the size of the grains in this case being only 1-10000 to 5-1000 of 
a millimeter in diameter. The analysis, in brief, is simply the mechanical 
separation of a soil into eight conventional parts, the parts themselves 
being fixed by the size of the grains composing them. If we make such an 
analysis of a soil best adapted to the growth of lettuce, the Boston soil, 
for example, we find the amounts of the various constituents as follows: ~ 
>’ American Gardening, 16: 135, Apr. 18, 1895. 
* A millimeter is approximately 1-25 of an inch. 
