426 | GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 
defective condition of the timber produced here. Many of the trees are 
hollow-hearted. Another explanation is offered in the fires that the In- 
dians were accustomed to kindle annually throughout this part of the 
State. The sparsenessof the timber can no doubt be attributed to the last 
named caused. 
While some of these varieties of soil are much warmer and kinder 
than others, all of them form blue grass land. As soon as the surface 
water is withdrawn, this most valuable of all our forage plants—Poa pra- 
tens, or Kentucky Blue Grass, comes in to displace the wild grasses that 
have occupied the ground hitherto, and it comes to stay. This is not the 
place to take up in detail this great source of agricultural wealth. It is 
enough to say that all of its charact-ristic excellences are here shown. 
The best rewards of agriculture in Madison county, have hitherto been 
drawn from this spontaneous product of its soil. The lands of the county 
have been turned into pasture-grounds since their first occupation. 
Under judicious management, cattle do well upon them throughout our 
ordinary winters, without hay or grain. 
It is to be remarked that Madison county is a blue grass region not so 
much because of the composition of its drift-beds as from the fact that 
these drift-beds are extended, owing to the accidents of their recent 
geological history, in wide plains which allow the abundant accumula- 
tion of vegetable matter in the forming soil. These same drift-deposits 
when they lie on well drained slopes form a stubborn, yellow clay that 
can hardly be kept covered with sod of any description. It must not, 
however, be inferred that all level drift tracts will become blue grass 
land, irrespective of their composition. Clays derived in large part from 
the waste of limestone, as are those of Madison county, are especially 
adapted to the growth of blue grass. Madison county has no monopoly of © 
this important product, but all the flat-lying tracts of the counties 
around it, as they have shared in its geological history, share also in its 
agricultural capabilities. 
These districts were shunned in the early settlements of this general 
region on account of their swampy character—but discerning men soon 
came to see their great possibilities, and as the price per acre was scarcely 
more than nominal, they were bought in large tracts and have been so 
held until the present time. Farms of 2,000 acres are not unusual in the 
county, and fields of five hundred acres arecommon. The recently divided 
estate of William Wilson, in the Darby Plains of Canaan township, em- 
braced 9,000 acres. 
The county is famous not only for the number of cattle that it pro- 
duces, but also for the quality. It holds some of the finest herds of im- 
proved cattle to be found in the State or country. 
