36 
Research Bulletin No. 3 
better filled spikes (Table 6). Nearly all the spikes appeared dur- 
ing the latter part of May. On June 24 ripe heads were removed 
from TV and V. By July 4 all the heads were ripe except one 
on a late tiller in VII, which did not ripen until July 26. 
The appearance of the eight cylinders on June 24 is shown in 
figure 3. 1 
Each culm was cut off even with the surface and removed 
from the cylinder as soon as it was quite dry. 
The cylinders which had borne no plants were removed from 
the pit on June 24, weighed, and opened. The others were sim- 
ilarly treated as soon as possible after all the plants in them 
had ripened. In the case of three cylinders there was an in- 
terval of six days between the death (and removal) of the last 
plant and the opening of the cylinder. The presence of any 
crevice beside the cylinder wall, referred to above, was recorded 
at the time of opening the cylinder. Each section, as removed, 
was carefully examined for roots and well mixed before taking 
the sample. 
No crevice was found along the walls in III and VI. In II, 
V, and VIII a crevice extended to 6 inches, in VII to 18, in I 
to 39, and in IV to 66 inches. Where the crevices did not extend 
below twelve inches they were found to have been completely 
filled with the dry surface soil, which had been worked down into 
them by means of the spatula, but where they extended to a 
greater depth they were found to have been only partly filled below 
the twelfth inch, leaving the portion below as an intercommuni- 
cating air space. In IV, separate samples for moisture determi- 
nations were taken from the outer and from the inner portion of 
the soil column in the case of the four sections of the second foot. 
No difference in moisture content was found, indicating that no 
loss of moisture had taken place thru the crevice. The explana- 
tion of this is that the air in the crevice had been kept in a satu- 
rated condition, it being in contact with soil which contained not 
less than the maximum amount of hygroscopic moisture. 
Koots were numerous in the first foot in all the cylinders 
bearing plants. In I and IV they were numerous and well dis- 
tributed at all depths to the bottom of the cylinder; in II they 
penetrated as deeply but were not as numerous, while in V, VII, 
and VIII they were very scarce below 24, 21, and 21 inches re- 
spectively, but a few were found to extend to 39, 45, and 60 
inches respectively. As no attempt was made at a quantitative 
separation of the roots from the soil, some may have been over- 
a Alway, F. J. Moisture Studies of Semiarid Soils. Report of Winni- 
peg meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. 
1909, p. 699. Photograph reproduced in Widtsoe's "Dry Farming," 1911, 
p. 96. 
