UTAH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 95 
THE RELATION OF THE METHOD OF 
ANALYZING ALKALI SOILS TO 
THE LIMITS OF TOXICITY. 
BY D. W. PITTMAN. 
The importance of the alkali problem need not be 
emphasized here. So large a percentage of our non- 
productive land is non-productive because of alkali as to 
make the study of alkali of major importance in this 
region. One of the first problems to be met with by the 
investigator is to be able to tell by examining a piece of 
land whether or not it contains enough alkali to prohibit 
or lessen crop production. The two phases of this prob- 
lem are: to determine by analysis how much alkali the 
soil contains, and to determine by experiment how much 
alkali the crops will endure. Both these phases have 
been studied by many investigators but with methods so 
varied that the results obtained by different men are 
hardly comparable. There are almost as many methods 
of testing for alkali and of expressing the results of the 
tests as there are men studying the problem, each man 
using a method most adapted to his line of work. On 
the other hand, the men studying the toxic limits of the 
alkali salts may use salt solutions, may add the salts to 
the soil, or may: test natural alkali soils by one of the 
various methods. All these methods yield entirely differ- 
ent results and a study of the literature in this line gives 
such widely different limits of tolerance of crops for the 
various salts as to leave one in a state of confusion. 
In this work it was the intention to show that differ- 
ent methods of analyzing soils gave different results and to 
give a little data on the toxic limits of a few salts as shown 
by some of the more common tests. Preliminary studies 
too lengthy to be included here showed that the different 
standard methods of testing soils for alkali salts and of ex- 
pressing the results gave differences occasionally amount- 
ing to over 1000 per cent in the results. .A study of the 
literature on the toxic limits gives still greater differences. 
Therefore, only a few of the analytical methods were 
-tried out in this experiment. 
The tests were arranged in series so that each was re- 
