From Tarr and Martin's "College Physiography." By permission of the Macmillan Company
GOOD CROPS FROM NEW ENGLAND'S STONY FIELDS
While the stones, big and little, with which the fields of New England are so richly supplied have not produced what you would call a brilliant performer among soils, they have made a good steady soil that can turn its hand to almost anything, and that has helped greatly in growing farm boys into famous men. In building those stone fences, for example, the boys learned that it always pays to do your work well. A hundred years is merely the tick of a watch in the life of a fence like that!
The soils of New England are like the New Englander himself, they can turn their hands to almost anything; raise any kind of crop suited to the climate, while richer soils are often not so versatile. The reason is that these pebbles were originally gathered by the glaciers from widely separated river-beds, and so contain all varieties of rock with every kind of plant food in them. It takes a long, long time to make soil out of bed-rock, but in the case of soils in which there are a great many pebbles it is different; and you can see why. On a great mass of rock there is comparatively little surface for the air and other pioneer soil-makers to get at, and so decay is slow; while the same amount of rock broken up into pebbles presents a great deal of surface for decay.
If you will examine with a glass—an ordinary hand-glass will do—one of these decaying pebbles lying embedded in the grass you can trace on it a number of wrinkly lines—sometimes even a network. These are the marks, the "finger-prints," of little roots. Little roots, as we have seen, are very wise. They always know what they are about, and the fact that they cling to the pebbles in this way means that they are getting food out of them.
And that's right where the cows of Wisconsin come in. The rootlets of the grasses get a steady supply of food from the decaying surfaces of these pebbles scattered through the pastures, and then pass it on to the cows.
