THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 



477 



Alkaline Slope on the Shore of Salton Sea. 



Colorado River into the Salton Basin. 

 It will be remembered that in the 

 autumn of 1904 an irrigation ditch was 

 eroded into a stream that carried an 

 enormous amount of water from the 

 river into the sink — at its lowest level 

 280 feet below that of the sea — and 

 formed a lake some five hundred square 

 miles in extent, which threatened to 

 extend and submerge a flourishing dis- 

 trict. After repeated failures and the 

 expenditure of several million dollars, 

 the overflow was checked early in 1907. 

 The submergence of this area and its 



drying up have caused and will cause 

 changes in the vegetation which may 

 throw light on the distribution of 

 plants, and the Department of Botan- 

 ical Research of the Carnegie Institu- 

 tion, under the direction of Dr. D. T. 

 MacDougal, with its Desert Laboratory 

 at Tucson, Arizona, was in a position 

 to take up this problem. It has been 

 extended to the Pattie Basin, into 

 which flood water escapes nearly every 

 year. The general plan of the work is 

 described in the last Year Book of the 

 institution, from which the accom- 



Desert Wash occupied by an Arm of the Salton Sea. 



