52 Contributions to Western Botany, No. IX. [zor 
remarkable when they do occur. By this, the only possible agency 
the great alkaline deserts are being gradually made less salty 
and alkaline, the barren area more contracted, and an incipient 
water channel is forming which, in winter, at least, will drain 
off the salts of the desert into Great Salt Lake. By this means 
we see the barren area being deepened as well as contracted, and 
at the same time the surrounding area increased and raised. ‘This 
raising is greatly assisted by the character of the vegetation and 
its peculiar mode of growth. It should be noted that the con- 
stant blowing off of the concentrated salts of the surface would, 
in time, take away most of the alkaline elements of the soil, till 
the alkalinity were reduced to at least 3 per cent., or may be less, 
even though much of it gets back again by being washed out of 
the higher adjoining ground. The whole tendency of the wind and 
drainage is to dump all the saline elements into Great Salt Lake, 
and it is a noteworthy fact that the wind is doing what the water 
cannot do in this regard. Another agency for sweetening the 
desert lies in the leaves and stems of the alkali-loving plants. 
They are conspicuously salty and thus lift above the soil the 
saline elements, when they die each carries a small portion of 
alkali locked up in it, and when the wind carries the dead leaf or 
twig away it also takes the salt. 
The pioneer plant in the redemption of the desert is Spirosta- 
chys occidentalis Watson. Salicornia herbacea L. also grows in 
soil as salty, but its value is infinitessimal because of its mode of 
growth and its annual habit. We find Spirostachys encroaching 
on the desert on all sides. It extends miles further out than any 
other plant. The seeds, on germinating, form thick and bent 
roots which are tangled and increase much faster than the stems 
which arise from them. As they grow they lift up the soil in 
larger and larger masses. A plant only six inches high generally 
makes a mound half as high and several inches wide. This is 
increased both in height and extent as the plants grow till the 
mound sometimes reaches ro feet high, but usually they reach 2 
feet, and are about double to triple this extent horizontally. The 
winds of the desert, instead of blowing off the soil from the roots, 
and so reducing their height, deposit their dust among the roots 
