SOIL AND SURFACE.

The soil of Story County is generally of a dark loam of exceeding fertility, underlaid with a subsoil of clay and gravel. Experience has proven this soil rich in all those properties required to produce the cereals and the different grasses. The wild grass on the high prairie grows luxuriantly, affording excellent natural pasturage, and an abundant supply of hay of a superior quality. While our cultivated lands yield large crops of corn and the small grains, our soil and climate seem especially adapted to the raising of stock. For years to come, the wild pasturage will afford a scarcely diminished supply of summer food for cattle, and the time is far distant when the product of the excellent prairie hay will be materially lessened. Timothy and clover have been tried sufficiently to establish the fact that if not strictly indigenous, they are easy of introduction, and make certain and rapid growth. Settlers from the “Blue Grass” districts of Kentucky and southern Indiana, pronounce our soil and climate, exactly adapted to the growth of that highly valued grass, which opinion, experience here has gone far to corroborate.

Although the surface of the county is generally slightly rolling, very few sections are so broken as to forbid easy cultivation, as is the case in many of the counties nearer the Missouri river. As before remarked, natural drainage is the rule, and there is no portion of the county where artificial drainage may not be accomplished, by a very small outlay of labor. These facilities for relieving the surface of surplus water should receive great consideration from all settlers in a prairie country, as on the accomplishment of this result, very largely depends not only health, but also the productiveness of the soil.

The valleys near the streams are not deep, and therefore the belts of timber can be plainly seen at a great distance. The alternate stretches of prairie and timber here met with are very pleasing to the eye, especially when the forests are dressed in their summer habiliments of green, and the prairies are decked with, their variegated flowery carpets. In the winter these belts of timber, break the bleak prairie winds, and along their borders, stock at all seasons finds a perfect and ever grateful shelter.