15 



must come from the soil. To grow crops successfully in an arid 

 country two things are absolutel}' necessar}- the proper kind of soil 

 and water. Experience long ago demonstrated that the greatest 

 problem confronting the farmer in arid countries is the danger from 

 harmful accumulations or the rising of alkali salts. Case after cti.se is 

 on record where either from the use of alkali-impregnated water or 

 from the localizing of the small amount of alkali already in the soil 

 large areas have been ruined, where when irrigation began there was 

 no appreciable amount apparent in any of these soils. In nearly every 

 irrigated region these alkaline areas seem to be a necessary adjunct. 

 Much work has been done by the different experiment stations of 

 the United States and this Bureau in the past few years in determin- 

 ing the amount of alkali various crops will withstand in these alkaline 

 areas, and the following limitations have been established for the 

 white alkali: 



Percent. 



Barley, sugar beets, sorghum . . : 0. 6 to 1.0 



Alfalfa, wheat, corn 2 to .4 



Sorghum is an alkali-resisting .plant and will very probably with- 

 stand more than sugar beets. By glancing at these figures and at the 

 alkali map which accompanies this report it will be seen that for a 

 great deal of the lands of the area mapped even the most alkali-resis- 

 tant plants will not grow at the present time, before any accumulation 

 at the surface has taken place from evaporation or concentration of 

 seepage waters. The subsoil of all of the area is strongly impregnated 

 with salts, a part of which must, in all except the very sand}- soils, 

 eventually reach the surface and greatly interfere with agriculture. 



When looked at rationally it is easy to understand why this country 

 is alkaline. It is part of an old desiccated sea bed and is all below the 

 present sea level. The soils were deposited and saturated with sea 

 water or brackish water, which evaporated and left them strongly 

 impregnated with the salts in solution. The rainfall is so slight as 

 never to penetrate the soils to any depth, so that very little salt has 

 ever been washed out of them. Wells put down to subsurface water 

 all over the valley find water which contains alkali sometimes too 

 much for domestic use. Salton salt works are at the bottom of the 

 basin, where tons and tons of salt are taken from the surface of the 

 ground each year, only to be replaced by the evaporation of seepage 

 waters, which must, in part, be the drainage from this very country. 



One hundred and twent} T -five thousand acres of this land have 

 already been taken up by prospective settlers, many of whom talk of 

 planting crops which it will be absolute!}' impossible to grow. They 

 must early find that it is useless to attempt their growth. On the bad 

 alkali lands they should try to grow only crops suited to such lands. 

 Test plots will be of very little value except for the year in which 



