82 



BULLETIN F. 



MOVEMENT OF POTASH BY CAPILLARITY. 



Two features regarding the capillary movement of potash 

 through the eight soils under investigation, are brought out in 

 a striking 1 manner by the data of the several tables of the pre- 

 ceding pages ; these are the large amounts of potash "which, in 

 every instance, have been left in recoverable form in the soil 

 at the lower ends and in even larger amounts at the upper ends 

 of the soil columns. If the mean amounts of potash recovered 

 from the different sections! of the soil columns of the eight 

 types are obtained for both capillary periods, they will appear 

 as expressed in the table next given. 



Mean amounts of potash recovered from different sections of soil 

 columns after capillary movement has taken place. 



From this table it is seen that the general tendency has been 

 for the potash to concentrate at the bottom of the columns where 

 the solution entered, while higher up in the soil capillarity had 

 the effect of forcing the potash upward until it was arrested 

 in the surface inch. The general character of this resulting 

 distribution is more clearly brought out in the diagram, Fig. 3, 

 p. 83, where the imean ampunts found in the several layers 

 after 20 and 50 days of capillary movement had taken place 

 are plotted to the same scale. From these curves it will be 

 seen that the amounts' of water-soluble potash recovered from 



