518 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



"Only 0.2 per cent of sodium bicarbonate was added to the soil, and as this 

 amount was fixed as the limit of crop tolerance, no leaching would be neces- 

 sary to reach this point if it were not for the ready change of the 0.8 per cent 

 of sodium carbonate to the bicarbonate form. 



"The results of this experiment would seem to indicate that sodium car- 

 bonate and bicarbonate were more easily leached from sandy loam and clay 

 soils than sodium sulphate, and almost equal to sodium chlorid, but the lower- 

 ing of the tolerance limit of the carbonates and bicarbonates . . . was doubt- 

 less due more to reactions with other salts than to the leaching action of the 

 water. This is indicated by the fact that carbonates and bicarbonates were 

 never found concentrated at the lower limits of moisture as were the chlorids 

 and sulphates." 



Oat sick land, A. T. Fowlib {North of Scot. Col. Agr. Expt. Leaflet 28 {1913), 

 pp. 97, 98). — ^Attention is briefly called to certain lands on which oats refused to 

 grow, and it is suggested that this condition is due to alkalinity resulting from 

 the use of large amounts of seaweed. It was found that the application of 

 ammonium sulphate in large measure corrected the unfavorable condition. 



[Unproductive peat or muck soils], A. T. Wiancko {Indiana Sta. Rpt. 

 1913, pp. 60, 61). — Certain unproductive peat soils which were well supplied 

 with lime, but which did not respond to applications of potash and phosphates, 

 were found to contain 4,375 parts per million of nitrates and total soluble salts 

 amounting to 1.2 per cent. These soluble salts were largely concentrated in 

 the surface soil and probably account for the unproductiveness of the soil and 

 for the death of corn and onions when an attempt was made to grow these crops 

 on the soil. Further proposed experiments with these soils are briefly re- 

 ferred to. 



The reclamation of an unproductive soil of the Kankakee marsh region, 

 J. B. Abbott, S. D. Conner, and H. R. Smalley {Indiana Sta. Bui. 170 {1913), 

 pp. 329-374, figs. 22). — In the experiments here reported, it was found that 

 certain restricted areas of peaty sand and dark sandy loam, aggregating per- 

 haps 50 square miles in the Kankakee area in northwestern Indiana, were ex- 

 tremely unproductive even after thorough drainage and liberal manuring and 

 fertilization. 



Chemical analyses showed that the soils were fairly well supplied with plant 

 food, but excessively acid; nevertheless the soils contained large amounts of 

 nitrate nitrogen during the growing season. The nitric acid was found to be, 

 in part at least, combined with aluminum, and the apparent acidity of water ex- 

 tracts of the soil was directly proportional to the amount of aluminum present 

 in the solution. Evidently it represented the amount of alkali required to pre- 

 cipitate the aluminum rather than actual free acidity. Application of pulverized 

 limestone rendered the soil productive but did not seem to accelerate greatly the 

 already rapid rate of nitrification. " The evidence indicates that some element 

 in these soils other than calcium or magnesium acts as a salifiable base capable 

 of supporting nitrification, and the composition of the water extract of the un- 

 treated soil points strongly to aluminum." 



It was found that very dilute solutions of aluminum nitrate were toxic to 

 corn seedlings in water culture in the presence of mineral nutrients, the toxicity 

 being approximately equal to that of nitric acid of the same normality and to 

 that of cold water extracts of the unproductive soil containing the same amounts 

 of aluminum and about the same amounts of mineral nutrients. 



" The extreme toxicity of aluminum nitrate in water cultures, even in the 

 presence of nutrients, together with the presence of large amounts of water 

 soluble nitrate and aluminum in the soil, leads to the conclusion that soluble 

 salts of aluminum, or more fundamentally, the lack of basicity which permits 



