374 



widely in their ability to withstand alkali. What is wanted is a 

 crop that will aid in removing the salts and at the same time give 

 a profitable return. Of the cultivated crops, sugar beets will stand 

 the most alkali and give good returns. They are an inter-tillage 

 crop, being cultivated between the rows like corn, thus keeping a 

 surface mulch on the ground. They also absorb large amounts of 

 soluble salts, and remove the salts in this way. Sometimes the first 

 crop on such soil will absorb such a large amount of salt that cattle 

 will refuse to eat the beets, and if starved until they do eat them, 

 the effect is the same as a physic. 



The Danish sugar beet is a good variety, and will yield from 

 400 to 500 bushels per acre. The roots should be pulled in the fall 

 before the frost and the tops cut off not too short. They make an 

 excellent succulent winter feed for all classes of live stock and espe- 

 cially for dairy cattle. 



The seeding can be done by using the common grain drill, mix- 

 ing one-third seed with two-thirds barley chop, stopping up the tubes 

 in the drill to make the rows the required distance apart and regulat- 

 ing the drill to plant the seed at the required rate in the rows. The 

 crop should receive three or four surface cultivations during the 

 summer to keep down the weeds and prevent evaporation. It is 

 sometimes necessary to raise a beet crop trie second year on bad spots, 

 but usually it is well to plow in the fall just after harvesting the crop 

 of beets and try a grain crop the following year. (Manitoba Ag. 

 Col. B. 7; Bu. of Soils B. 10, 12.) 



SOIL NOTES. 



Sedentary soils, or soils in place, are those which have not 

 been transported by geological agencies, but which remain where 

 they were formed, covering, or contiguous to, the rocks from whose 

 disintegration they originated. They are usually shallow soils. 



Transported soils are those which have been removed to a dis- 

 tance from the rock beds from which they originated by the action 

 of moving ice (glaciers) or water (rivers) and deposited as sediment 

 in their present positions. 



Drift soils consist of fragments whose edges, at least, have been 

 rounded by friction, if the fragments themselves are not altogether 

 destitute of angles. They are usually deposited without any stratifi- 

 cation or separation of parts. The materials consist of soil proper 

 mingled with stones of all sizes from sand grains to immense rock- 

 masses of many tons in weight. This kind of soil is readily distin- 

 guished from all others by the presence of the rounded rocks or 

 boulders (hard heads) it contains, and which are promiscuously 

 scattered through it. The drift has undoubtedly been formed by 

 moving ice in that period of the earth's history known as the glacial 

 epoch, a period when the present surface of the country was covered 

 to a great depth by fields of ice. 



Alluvial soils consist of worn and rounded materials which 

 have been transported by the agency of running water (rivers and 

 tides) . Since small and light particles are more readily sustained in 

 a current of water than heavy masses, alluvium is always more or 



