310 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA EXPERIMENT STATION 



waters of the petroleum bearing regions of the State in the coast 

 ranges, the streams of that region, especially the smaller ones, are 

 sometimes too strongly charged with alkali (in this case largely the 

 sulfates of soda and magnesia) to be suitable either for irrigation 

 or domestic use. Towards the end of the dry season, even the larger 

 streams of the southern coast ranges, with their diminished flow, some- 

 times show an excess of salts. This seems also to be true of the San 

 Jacinto river, which feeds Elsinore Lake." On the other hand, he 

 says: "The waters flowing from the Sierra Madre, south of the 

 Tehachapi range, are throughout of excellent quality for irrigation 

 purposes, as are all those flowing from the Sierra Nevada. The same 

 is true of the artesian waters of the valley of southern California, from 

 Los Angeles east to Redlands. " 



A considerable number of groves that have been irrigated with 

 saline water have been under close observation for one or more years. 

 As a means of securing information on the effects, soil samples, drawn 

 with a one-inch soil tube, have been analyzed and wherever possible 

 adjacent areas that have been irrigated with comparatively pure 

 water, or virgin soil, have also been sampled. Some of the results are 

 submitted below, together with analyses of the irrigation waters that 

 have been applied. 



The analytical results are expressed as parts per million of the 

 soil or water. In contrast to previous publications, we have not 

 attempted to estimate the amounts of the several salts present. The 

 state of present knowledge does not make it possible to determine 

 definitely the actual amounts of the different salts that occur in com- 

 plex mixtures, such as irrigation waters or soils. By analysis the 

 components of the different salts may be determined, but while vari- 

 ous schemes have been employed for calculating the amounts of salts 

 present, all of them are more or less arbitrary and have little justi- 

 fication in modern chemistry. Accordingly, the analytical data are 

 submitted as determined without calculating the theoretical salt com- 

 binations. 



The analyses recorded in table 1 have been chosen to show the 

 wide range in composition found among the irrigation supplies. Some 

 of these contain large amounts of salts, others lesser amounts. As 

 will be pointed out more fully below, the effects of some of these 

 waters have been extremely injurious. Sample Xo. 84 represents suit- 

 able water. This sample, drawn from wells located near the San 

 Bernardino Mountains, fairly represents the main supplies of moun- 

 tain water of southern California, the effects of which have been 

 entirely satisfactory. 



