Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 6 · column 1 of 7 · from the scan, no model involved
By Don Audette
Special to the Rappahannock News
Reading a soil survey report for Culpeper County can leave you slumped over a computer keyboard, fast asleep. You grasp at any sentence that relates to real life, such as the description of someone back in 1941 walking around the Clevenger’s Corner area and, at every quarter-mile interval, boring into the ground with an auger or digging a hole with a spade to examine, classify, and map the soils found.
You perk up slightly when reading, for example, that 650 million years ago certain cobblestones and boulders in the South Wales area were probably “tossed up and down in the throat of a volcano before they were finally ejected.” Otherwise, the soil survey is a real snoozer.
Three lines of
defense
Then why read it? A previous article in this series told of nature’s three lines of defense against pollution: vegetation, the soil, and surface water. Each contributes to the cleansing of polluted water, whether such water originates as acid rain or gathers more pollutants as part of storm water runoff. The 1941 soil survey describes the nature of the vegetation that is available in the area: crops, forest, pasture. It details the extent and quality of.jtj^e soil and thus its ability to handle nutrients and nullify pollu
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