Excerpt from Annual Report, 1884 The rapid growth of Indiana in population, and its widespread and multiplying industries, stimulates research, and renders important every newly discovered feature in the mineral and agricultural resources of the State. It is the object of the geologist in prosecuting his survey of the State, to make it as searching as possible, and turn to use every object that will serve to cheapen and foster these industries. Things that appear common and worthless in themselves when properly studied and brought into combination with one another in a suitable manner sometimes give rise to products of great utility, and furnish employment in a direction that provides a new field of operation, and draws from those industries where there is a superabundance of laborers seeking to be employed. Chief among the industries of the State is agriculture, and this art has for its foundation the soil. The soil of Indiana in its virgin condition compares favorably with that of any Western State, and the portions in cultivation yield cereal and grass crops fully up to those of the most favored portions of the Union, but from the very nature of the origin of this soil, we find great irregularity of productiveness in almost every field; in farmers' parlance, the land is spotted. The siliceous and muddy sediments formed by the disintegration and grinding down of the rock-burdened regions that lay to the northward, by glaciation and its distribution by water, separated the material into mud more or less argillaceous, argo-siliceous, sandy and gravelly soils. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.