THE ABSORPTIVE PBOPEETIES OF SOILS 873 



Where crops were present to absorb the nitric acid, 

 calcium was greatly conserved. The quantities of ma- 

 terial carried off in drainage water was doubtless ab- 

 normally high in this case, as the soil had recently been 

 placed in the tanks. 



279. Composition of surface water. — Another method 

 proposed for obtaining these data is to analyze and 

 measure the water draining from a known area of land. 

 Norton ^ has done this in the valley of Richland Creek, 

 Arkansas, and has calculated the loss of a number of the 

 soil constituents. A comparison of the figures obtained 

 b}^ Norton with those obtained by Lyon and Bizzell in 

 the experiments just quoted will give some idea of the 

 quantities of mineral matter removed from soils by 

 drainage water. The Arkansas soil had presumably 

 received little manure. The soil in the Cornell Uni- 

 versity tanks had previously received fifteen tons of 

 stable manure. The Arkansas drainage doubtless in- 

 cluded some surface water that had never passed through 

 the soil and was therefore poor in mineral matter; the 

 large quantity of volatile matter indicates its surface 

 nature, as water that passes through a soil contains little 

 organic matter. 



There is little similarity in the results of these analyses. 

 They serve, however, to bring out the differences between 

 the composition of the run-off and the drainage water of 

 soils, in so far as that may be judged from widely dif- 

 ferent soils and climatic conditions, including the 

 rainfall. 



1 Norton, J. H, Quantity and Composition of Drainage 

 Water and a Comparison of Temperature, Evaporation, and 

 Rainfall, Journal Am. Chem. Soe., Vol. 30, pp. 1186-1190. 

 1908. 



