58 
Research Bulletin No. 3 
Cylinder with no free water in the subsoil. — Cylinder 
XIII was filled with subsoil containing 5.8 per cent total water. 
This is practically the hygroscopic coefficient and accordingly 
the subsoil contained practically no free water. On the subsoil 
was placed eleven inches of air-dry surface soil having an average 
hygroscopic coefficient of 10.1 and enough water was added to 
raise the average percentage of total water in the surface foot 
to 20. Some experiments 1 carried out later indicate that practi- 
cally the whole of this added water would be held within the sur- 
face twelve inches, allowing only a very little to pass by capillar- 
ity into the uppermost portion of the subsoil. 
v VI XX XIX XIV XIII 
Fig. 12. Red Fife wheat 77 and 123 days after planting; experiment of 
1910. 
The plants in this cylinder did as well as those in the five 
other cylinders until the fifth week, after which they rapidly fell 
behind. They made no growth after March 12. On March 18, 
after three days with high temperatures in the greenhouse, all 
four plants wilted and did not afterwards fully recover. None 
formed a tiller or put forth a spike. Their condition on April 
23 is shown in figure 12. They grew steadily worse but were 
1 Analogous to those described by Alway and Clark, Twenty-fifth An- 
nual Report of the Nebraska Experiment Station, 1912, p. 285. 
