The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-10-01

year, and that also goes to build up the land. In the same way this upper Mississippi valley and the remainder of the great loessian province of the Uni ted States. comprising lands bordering the great lakes, Is overlaid with wind blown dust from the Rocky mountains and 1t Is out of this dust that we get the wheat, corn and meat which form our chief food supply.
 Made By the Glaciers
 The greater part of this wind blown dust lies on a bed of rock which was ground up and brought down by the glaciers during the great ice ages of the past. There are places where the dust is not thick and where this glacial soh lies close to the surface. This also forms
 some of the best wheat and fruit lands The Red river valley is part of it, and you may find more about Lakes Erie and Ontario, running up into New York. talk ing in Buffalo, Oswego and going on | clear to the Canadian boundary That | land is excellent for fruits, and it is one of our best regions for the production of apples and grapes.
 In addition to these soils we have those which form the banks of the rivers and the lowlands adjoining. They are scar- tered along the Missouri and Mississippi | and the tributaries which flow into them. | Thay come from the highlands nearby and are young soils. being usually more pro- ductive than the territory from wnicn | they have come. Of these about 13,OOO 600 acres have been surveyed.
 And then there are other spe ,ial
 patches. known as the limestone valleys ! and uplands, of which we have tested be-
 tween 100000 and S0O0,OOO acres. Some of
 these are found under the blue grass of | Kentucky, where they produce excellent | horses and whisky. They extend down ! into Tennessee and also cover a great part of Missouri, running south of the
 state into Arkansas. There is another class
 of soils in the Rocky mountain basin,
 and some of all these soils are found on
 the Pacific slope.
 1 The Bureau of Soils
 l I wish I could take you through the | bureau of soils and show you the people
 at work testing the earth which has
 been sent In from the fields. There are
 great laboratories which have bottles
 containing soils of every description and
 representing every part of the country
 There are upward of 800 different soils in these bottles and the reports will tell l just what the property of each is and what crops it will raise. You may learn | the character of the earth Some of it
 Is coarse. gritty sand Other soils arc made Of fine sands and others of sandy loams and fine sandy loams. There are
 other divisions such as silt, clay loans
 and clay so that one can know the text | ure of the land and for what it is fitted. A description of the varieties and their
 characteristics is too long for this paper.
 Soil Maps
 When this soil survey is completed
 every farmer in the United States can
 write to the government and learn all about the land he is working. He wiA
 be sent a map of his county which, in | some cases, Is as big as tablecloth, and so pictured in colors that he can | tell in just what townships each kind
 of land is and can almost pick out his
 own farm In such surveys the work is exhaustive ly done. The experts, who are college
 bred men. and who know all about the earth and its products, bore down into tthe ground to depth of three feet and
 take up specimens of the soil and an