Soil survey of Hunt County, Texas Page: 52 of 60
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50 BUREAU OF CHEMISTRY AND SOILS, 1934
been entirely leached from the soil horizons. These are known as
Rendzina soils. Because of the influence of parent material on soil
development the characteristics due to climatic influence have not
become well established, and these soils therefore are intrazonal.
Houston black clay and Hunt clay are the dominant Rendzina types
in the county.
Following is a description of a typical profile of Houston black
clay as it occurs in a virgin area covered with tall prairie grasses
3 miles southwest of Floyd where the smooth well-drained surface
has a slope of about 1 percent:
1. 0 to 18 inches, black calcareous coarse granular clay which, when very
dry, breaks into very hard roundish aggregates, from one-eighth
to one-half inch in diameter, loosely held together by plant roots. In
cultivated fields, clods, on drying, crumble naturally to a loose mass
of angular grains one-eighth to one-sixteenth inch in diameter. Below
plow depth, the material, when moist, breaks into hard clods with
bumpy surfaces. The material is extremely plastic when wet but
crumbly when dry. The fine aggregates are very hard.
2. 18 to 36 inches, very dark gray calcareous clay which breaks into large
irregular extremely hard clods.
3. 36 to 60 inches, dark-gray extremely hard cloddy clay containing a
few concretions of calcium carbonate.
4. 60 to 120 inches, gray cloddy calcareous clay with a yellowish tinge. It
contains calcium carbonate concretions and spots of dark-colored
surface soil material that has fallen down cracks.
5. 120 to 144 inches +, slightly altered parent material-a grayish-white
very highly calcareous clay or marl.
The granular character of the surface soil is not well expressed,
apparently owing to the extremely heavy texture of this soil. Its
breakage in cultivated fields, whereby clods crumble to grains on
drying, is a more distinguishing feature than is the structure of the
soil in the virgin condition. This same type of breakage in cultivated
fields is exhibited by Sumter clay, where eroded, which contains
practically no organic matter, and it apparently is an expression of
the extremely high content of colloids and of the large content of
lime. The change from each layer to the next is gradational. The
color of the subsoil, below a depth of about 5 feet, in some places is
gray, as in the profile described above, and in others it is olive
yellow grading to bluish gray. In the profile described the parent
material is derived from a geological formation known as Taylor
marl.
Houston black clay occupies a very large proportion of the smooth
blackland prairie, including both the rounded divides and the gentle
-slopes to drainageways. It represents an early stage of development,
although apparently development is as full as is normal within the
section of the outcrop of very highly calcareous clays. Judging
from the morphology as observed in the field, soil development has
consisted principally of leaching part of the lime out of the surface
layers and the accumulation of organic matter to a great depth. Little
or no shifting of the other soil constituents is apparent. A few darkbrown
films, which appear to be iron compounds, occur along cleavage
planes in the deep substrata, and they may represent iron carried
down from the surface soil. No incipient eluviated horizon is present
in the surfaced soil, and no gray leached films surround the structure
particles.
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Templin, E. H. (Edward Henry) & Marshall, R. M. (Richard Moon). Soil survey of Hunt County, Texas, book, February 1939; [Washington D.C.]. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth19778/m1/52/?q=tex-land: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.