‘HURON COUNTY. 293 
The ridge is here largely composed of the debris of the Huron shale, 
which is often found in bed, a few feet beneath its base. The soil on each 
side is clay, mingled with a peaty, black mold, indicating a wide extent 
of shallow water resting upon the shales and their clay debris, which 
gradually passed into the condition of a swamp, ultimately filled witin 
the swamp vegetation, and slowly drained by the subsidence of the lake. 
The most abundant forest trees. on this soil, are yellow and swamp-oaks. - 
West of Monroeville, at “our Corners,” the ridge becomes tess con- 
spicuous, but maintains the same elevation, the marginal swamp of the 
old Jake having been here quite shallow. Beyond this, to the limit of 
the county, the ridge has an elevation of only from ten to fifteen feet 
above the level plain, which stretches away to the north of it. Ata 
point near where the Bellevue read crosses the county line, the lime- 
etone rock, in bed, may be seen cropping out of the sand ridge, indicating 
a low rock bluff, formerly the shore of the lake, which the waves have 
fouried beneath the sand. Where the ridge does not rest upon the bed- 
rock, the materials below it are here fifteen to twenty feet of silicious, 
blue clay, with abundance of granite boulders and pebbles, and fragments 
of shale, with quicksand below, resting upon the recks, and in which a 
supply of water is reached by wells. 
While the great body of this level land, reclaimed from the old swamps, 
as exceedingly fertile, there is a2 remarkable exceptien in a large tract 
north of Monroeville, and extending into Erie county, to which my at- 
tention wascalled some years before the survey was authorized. The soil 
is a fine, black, peaty mold, presenting nothing to the eye to distinguish 
it from the productive corn lands surrounding it. It wascleared and put 
under cultivation, upon the supposition that it was of equal value with 
the adjacent lands; but it refused to tolerate grass, or corn, or any valua- 
‘ole crop. Here and there an apple tree sprang up, spontaneously seeded, 
and grew vigorously; but the principal crop was a small one—a light 
erowth of weeds. ‘The effort was made to ameliorate a part of it by more 
thorough drainage, and ditches were opened through it at considerable 
expense; yet the land was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse. 
The soil is comparatively thin, the bed rock coming near the surface; 
ut equally thin soils, in other places in the neighborhood, are produc- 
tive, and I am confident this is not the real cause of its infertility. A 
washing of the soil showed, with litmus-paper test, a decided acid reac- 
tion, and selected specimens gave the taste of acid when touched by the 
' tongue. The vegetation, also, indicates the presence of acid. The soil 
has every element of fertility,.and there can be little doubt that this 
deleterious substance is the sole cause of its sterility. If this is so, it 
