‘ 
PERMEABILITY OF SOILS TO LIQUID WATER. 131 
tained increases from quartz sand to magnesia. The rap- 
idity of drying in the air diminishes in the same direction. 
Some observations of Zenger ( Wilda’s Centralblatt, 
1858, 1, 430) indicate the influence of the state of division 
of a soil on its power of imbibing water. In the subjoim- 
ed table are given in the first column the per cent of wa- 
ter imbibed by various soils which had been brought to 
nearly the same degree of moderate fineness by sifting off 
both the coarse and the fine matter; and the second col- 
umn gives the amounts imbibed by the same soils, reduced 
to a high state of division by pulverization. 
Coarse. Fine. 
Quartz sand, 26.0 53.5 
Marl (used as fertilizer, ) 30.2 54.5 
Marl, underlying peat, 39.0 48.5 
Brick clay, 66.2 57.5 
Moor soil, 104.5 101.0 
Alm (lime-sinter, ) 108.3 70.4 
Alm soil, 178.2 102.5 
Peat dust, 377.0 268.5 
The effects of pulverization on soils whose particles are 
compact is to increase the surface, and increase to a cor- 
responding degree the imbibing power. On soils consist- 
ing of porous particles, li e lime-sinter and peat, pulver- 
ization destroys the porosity to some extent and diminishes 
the amount of absorption. The first class of soils are 
probably increased in bulk, the latter reduced, by grinding. 
Wilhelm, ( Wilda’s Centralblatt, 1865, 1, 118), in a 
series of experiments on various soils, confirms the above 
results of Zenger. He found, e. g., that a garden mould 
imbibed 114 per cent, but when pulverized absorbed but 
62 per cent. 
To illustrate the different properties of various soils for 
which the farmer has but one name, the fact may be ad- 
duced that while Schiibler, Zenger, and Wilhelm found 
the imbibing power of “clay” to range between 40 and 
70 per cent, Stoeckhardt examined a “clay ” from Saxony 
