34 
Research Bulletin No. 3 
the first, second, and third 4 inches of the first foot, and the 
second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth foot. The 8 bulk soils were 
placed in separate sac^s for shipment to this 
Experiment Station, where each, in a dry con- 
dition, was thorolv mixed. The humid soil was 
from the Experiment Station Farm, at Lincoln, 
the 8 portions being taken at the depths corre- 
sponding to those of western Nebraska soil. 
The soils were placed in the cylinders in 
their natural order — that is, the sixth foot first 
and the first four inches last. The weight of 
each bulk soil placed in the different cylinders 
was recorded and a sample was saved for the 
determination of the moisture content and of 
the hygroscopic coefficient. The cylinders were 
filled, saturated with water, and drained as in 
the preceding year. After seepage had ceased a 
glass plug was placed in the one-hole rubber 
stopper in the bottom of each, and the cylinders 
moved to the greenhouse and placed in a pit 
which was 3 feet deep and covered with boards 
overlaid first with a layer of excelsior and then 
with one of soil. Thus the lower half of each 
cylinder was protected from the heat of the 
sun's rays and kept at a comparatively uniform 
temperature. 
In the case of each, except the check cylin- 
ders III and IV, 10 sprouted kernels of the 
same Red Fife wheat used the year before were 
placed in the moist surface soil and one inch of 
dry soil added. A week later the plants were 
Fig. 2. One of thinned to 4 in each cylinder, 
the cylinders. Cylinders I, II, III, and IV, with semiarid 
soil, were placed in the greenhouse on February 
8, and the others, V, VI, VII, and VIII, with humid soil, on 
February 23. 
Each cylinder was weighed on scales, sensitive to 15 grams, 
just before being placed in the pit and again on being removed at 
the close of the experiment. 
About the middle of March all the plants became prostrated. 
As the windows of the greenhouse had received a coat of white- 
wash some ten days before this injury was first noticed, it w^s 
suspected from the experience of the preceding year that this 
might have been the cause. Using hydrochloric acid all the white- 
wash was removed from the panes (March 23). However, no 
marked change in the condition of the plants was observed until 
