582 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



A thorough examination of the foregoing data reveals many exceed- 

 ingly interesting and highly important facts. In the first place they 

 show that the different soils caused entirely different amounts of water 

 to become inactive or unavailable. Thus in the case of soil No. 1 or 

 quartz sand only 2% of the 5 c. c. of water added failed to freeze while 

 in soil No. 3 more than 70% of the 5 c. c. added failed to freeze, and 

 consequently had been converted into an inactive or unfree form. 

 It appears that sands and very light sandy loams caused the smallest 

 amount of water to become inactive while the loams, silts, clays, and 

 mucks, the greatest. In the second i)lace the above data show that 

 those soils which caused the least amount of Avater to be converted into 

 unfree state produced the smallest lowering of the freezing point 

 while those soils which caused the greatest quantity of water to become 

 inactive produced the largest freezing-point depression. Thus soil No. 

 2 in which only 6% of the water added failed to freeze, the depression 

 of the freezing point amounts only to .074 °C, while in soil No. 3 in which 

 more than 70% of the water added refused to freeze the depression 

 amounts to .440 °C or 6 times as great. In every case there is almost a 

 perfect relation between the amount of water which failed to freeze and 

 consequently had become inactive according to the dilatometer method, 

 and the freezing-point depression. 



It seems to be absolutely proven, therefore, that soils cause water to 

 become unavailable or inactive and thereby lose its solvent action ; that 

 the amount varies with different soils, being smallest in sands and light 

 sandy loams and greatest in clay loams, clays, mucks, and peats; and, 

 that the water put out of action influences appreciably many determina- 

 tions commonly made for comparative studies especially if the ratio of 

 water to soil is not very large. 



The ability of soils to cause water to become inactive or unavailable 

 and to lose its solvent action, explains very readily why muck and peat 

 with 200 or 300% of water at the high moisture content produce as much 

 depression as the clays at only 40 or 50% of water. 



EFFECT OF SUCCESSIVE FREEZINGS UPON THE LOWERING OF THE FREEZING 



POINT. 



It was discovered at the very beginning of the first research that the 

 lowering of the freezing point of some soils such as sands and light 

 sandy loams, and of some artificial substances such as quartz sand, 

 kaolin, burned silicic acid, etc., remained quite constant with successive 

 freezings, but in soils such as sandy loams, loams, silts, clays, peats, etc., 

 it varied with repeated freezings, and indeed it decreased with succes- 

 sive freezings up to a certain number of freezings and then it became 

 constant. The magnitude of the change between the different soils 

 could not be compared in the first report because the length of time and 

 degree of super-freezing were not the same either within the same soils 

 or in the different soils. In other words, the procedure was not uniform. 

 The results in the first report were merely presented to show that succes- 

 sive freezings tend to diminish the lowering of the freezing point of some 

 soils and not of others. 



