38 
Research Bulletin No. 3 
looked, the soil in the lower portion of all the cylinders being 
very wet and sticky. 
The stopper of III was removed and the cylinder left in a ver- 
tical position for 16 hours before opening, but no seepage oc- 
curred. In the case of VIII the nipple carrying the rubber 
stopper was found to have been broken off in placing the cylinder 
in the pit. Accordingly, the half inch opening had remained only 
partly closed by the rough board on which the cylinder rested; 
yet the soil was as moist as that in VII. From the conduct of 
these two cylinders it appears probable that no loss of water by 
seepage would have taken place even if the glass plugs had been 
left out of the stoppers thruout the experiment. 
The data on the experiment are summarized in Table 6, and 
the moisture conditions at the time of opening the cylinders, and 
hence at the time the wheat plants died, are shown in Tables 
7 and 8. Figures 4 and o show the relation of the final water 
content of the different cylinders to the hygroscopic coefficient, 
to the wilting coefficient, and to the initial water content of the 
soil. The initial water content shown in the figures is the average 
for the six feet and does not at all indicate the initial water con- 
tent of the individual foot sections, this not being known. The 
initial moisture content varied a little from cylinder to cylinder 
and accordingly on the figures "the initial water content" as 
shown is not accurate for any one cylinder but is approximately 
correct for all four. 
The soils in the check cylinders III and VI, even at the close 
of the experiment, after having lost about 7 and 3.5 per cent 
water, were wetter than such soils are found under field condi- 
tions on uplands, even where conditions have been most favor- 
able for saturating the soil and subsoil. Thus the soil in the 
lower two feet of III carried about twice as much water as would 
have been found in the field. This large amount of water pres- 
ent at the beginning had permitted a continuous upward move- 
ment of w T ater thruout the experiment, there still being a con- 
siderable amount of free water even in the second and third inch 
sections. 
In the case of the three cylinders of eastern Nebraska soil 
which bore plants, nothing striking is to be observed. The mois- 
ture content increased from the surface downward. In the first 
foot it had been reduced below the hygroscopic coefficient, being 
lowest in VII on which the crop had been harvested last. The 
statement of the free water is no more striking than that of the 
total water. The dryness of the surface foot is to be attributed to 
direct evaporation. The data on these three cylinders furnish no 
evidence of the ability of the roots of the maturing wheat to re- 
duce the soil moisture below the wilting coefficient. 
