PEKMEABILITY OF SOILS TO LIQUID WATER. l8l 



taineJ 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 subjoin- 

 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. 



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, 1866, 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 

 TO per cent, Stoeckhardt examined a " clay " from Saxony 



