ee 
_ land he has to deal with. 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE and Reminder 13 
Riches 
in New England Land - 
By GEORGE FRENCH 
wits a soil expert from the Department of Agricul- 
¥ ture at Washington or one of the several agricul- 
tural colleges undertakes to advise a farmer as to the crops 
that will pay him best to raise on his farm he reports to 
the owner of the land in terms of crops. He tells one 
man to pull up his peach trees and plant onions. Another 
he advises to plant a peach orchard, or an apple orchard, 
as where the peach will grow the apple may be raised, 
and vice versa, with reservations on account of the early 
or late visitations of frost. He tells another man that his 
best prospect is hay, and yet another that he should go 
into the small fruits business. 
But the expert reads the soil in terms of geologic 
history. As the coarse grains of a peculiar kind of gravel 
slips gritily through his fingers his imagination goes back- 
ward well into the abysm of time and he notes the giant, 
pre-historic ice-field grind its way across the area of New 
England, wearing itself away as it progressed, and de- 
positing here and there some of the earth it had scraped 
off of some opposing ridge or mountain somewhere along 
its century-paced route from the north. He sees it 
stealthily come upon a low hill, push against it, rear itself 
up its sloping side, creep over its crest, carrying along with 
it all of the loose soil and a good part of the rocky sub- 
stance of the hill, to be doled out to other areas, here 
filling a depression, there leaving a pocket of earth that 
may have become loosened by the warmer sun’s rays, and 
again leaving behind some stubborn ledge a quantity of 
sand, gravel and debris. 
The expert knows that all soils are formed by three 
major processes: Disintegration of the foundation rocks ; 
the action of the waters of the rivers and streams, and 
the action of the winds that take land from one area and 
deposit it miles, and scores of miles from its source. These 
three processes are in operation all the time, now as well 
as when the land had no human inhabitants. The action 
of the ice-fields and the volcanos was for the most part 
prehistoric, and has practically ceased, so far as New Eng- 
land is concerned. But the ice fields and the other pro- 
cesses have provided New England with a great variety 
of soils. In Rhode Island the government experts list 
eleven kinds of soil. In Plymouth county, Massachusetts, 
they found sixteen varieties. In the Nashua area, New 
Hampshire, they are eight. The Vergennes area, in Ver- 
mont and New York, has nine. ‘The Orono, Maine, reg- 
ion has eight kinds of soil, all of glacial origin, while the 
Caribou region in the same state has eleven. Merrimack 
county, New Hampshire, has seven, all also of glacial 
origin, and all derived from granite. In the Connecticut 
Valley one would imagine there would be but one or two 
varieties of soil. In the lower portion there are nine. 
I have been at the pains to call attention to the great 
variety of soil prevailing in all sections of New England 
in order that the great diversity of possible crops may be 
realized, and to draw attention to the manifest fact that 
the New England farmer must know just what sort of 
Because Jones, whose farm lies 
on the slope from the valley to the hills, is able to make 
money from his apple or peach orchards it does not fol- 
low that Smith, whose farm may be in the valley, or 
under the shelter of a sturdy ledge of rocks, or on the 
exposed hill crest, may safely invest his money in peaches 
or apples. Perhaps one farm is composed of soil brought 
by glaciers from the granite regions of New Hampshire, 
while its neighbor is chiefly composed of erosions from 
the underlying limestone. ‘he owners of these two farms 
must pursue different policies, and cultivate different 
crops, 1f they hope to be prosperous. This wide diversity 
of soils in New England explains in part the ill-suecess 
of a proportion of the New Engalnd tarmers, as well as 
promises much to the enterprising farmers of the present 
and the future. There is no typical New England soil, 
as there are typical soils in the Western states, and in all 
of the prairie sections. In Oregon, for example, a farmer 
may adopt the policy and methods of the man who has 
been successtul, barring peculiarities that are apparent and 
well-defined. In New England it is extremely hazardous 
to attempt to rely upon the experience of the next neigh- 
bor. | 
The New England soils are, most of them, good me- 
diums for fertilization.. They have the minerals, except . 
where lime is needed, and are thus fitted for the reception | 
and assimilation of the humus. ‘The condition in New 
England is the reverse of the condition in much of the. 
West. There the mineral fundamentals are lacking and_ 
there is an excess of humus. ‘The soil of Texas, for ex- 
ample, has an almost bottomless deposit of humus, but 
lacks in mineral. Certain crops grow luxuriously there, 
and certain others cannot be assimilated. ; 
Once | was travelling about New England with a soil: 
expert from the Department 6f: Agriculture at Washing- 
ton, and after several days looking about, and after the 
expert had spent several weeks going about in New Eng- 
land, I asked him how much more the land under cultiva- 
tion in New England could be made to yield, without go- 
ing to the extreme of intensive cultivation, and he said,. 
“Ten hundred per cent.’ I gasped. I looked my doubt. 
“Yes,” he said, “I mean it. Ten hundred per cent. ‘This’ 
result could only be attained, however, by the use of the 
very best knowledge and methods. It cannot be hoped’ 
for, here nor elsewhere, from this generation of farmers. 
But how easy it would be to add a hundred per cent. ‘to 
the productiveness of the New England farms! To double 
the yield of the total area under the plow.” 
The facts about the value and productiveness of New 
England land are easily established. The census has shown 
us that New England improved land can be bought for one- 
quarter the cost of improved land in the Middle West 
and that it will produce one-third more. We are told: 
of the total product of Illinois, for example, and asked 
to compare it with the product of New England, and 
are not invited to remember that Illinois has about four 
times the improved area of all New England. New Eng- 
land raises five times as much fruit per acre as Illinois,’ 
seven times the value in vegetables, 17 per cent. more 
stock per acre, and about 20 per cent. more value in cer-. 
tain other crops per acre. 
New England land is valuable for a great variety 
of crops, but for fruit it surpasses any other section of. 
the country, because it is composed of the proper chemi- 
cals and because the climate is favorable for. the trees: 
and the fruit. ‘To give the scientific reasons for the su- 
premacy of New England as a fruit-producing region 
would necessitate a book. It is a fact that New England: 
raises better apples than other regions; excepting only’ 
a portion of New York, a small portion of Pennsylvania, 
some of Delaware and a little section of Virginia. The 
chemical composition of our hillsides gives us the New 
England apples that have the best flavor of any apples 
in the world. 2 
