Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III SOILS OF NEW YORK Few, if any, states have as large a variety of soils as New York. This, when coupled with the existing differences in elevation and in climate and varied nearness to market, forms the basis of a wide range of cropping schemes and of agricultural development. The soils of almost the entire State have been formed under the influence of glacial processes. As has been stated, the glacial incursion came into the State from the north and covered all but a small angle of country south of the Allegheny River, in Catta- raugus County. The general movement of the ice was deflected by the contour of the land surface. Tongues of ice in the valleys protruded far forward of the main mass. In the Mohawk Valley the general direction of movement of the ice as shown by scratches on the bed rock was nearly east and west, due to the deflection of its movement around the Adirondack Mountains from the Hudson Valley on the east and the St. Lawrence Valley on the west. In studying the soils of New York, it is important to keep in mind three facts: First, that the ice moved in general from the north; second, that the exposure of the different rock formations lay acrossthe general path of movement of the ice; third, that throughout the southwestern two-thirds of the State, the general slope of the land is to the north. As a result of this condition, ponds and finally great lakes were formed in the hollows between the front of the ice and the northward slope of the land as the ice gradually retreated northward due to melting. Naturally, the water accumulated in the valleys and sooner or later attained a level that permitted it to drain off to the southward in the form of great swollen rivers. The valleys of the Delaware, Susque- hanna and Allegheny rivers bear evidenc...