90 
Research Bulletin No. 3 
The crevice between soil column and cylinder wall extended 
to 6, 15, 6, 6, 24, 18, and 23 inches, respectively, in passing from 
the western to the eastern soils, but it was found well filled in 
the first four and filled to a depth of 12 inches in the other three. 
Roots penetrated to the sixth foot in all the cylinders except 
the Lincoln and the Surface Soil, but were very few in number 
below the surface foot, as may be seen from Table 21 and figure 
29. The Wauneta and the Hastings cylinders showed the most 
extensive root development. 
The moisture conditions on the death of the plants are shown 
in Table 22. An abundance of free moisture was present at some 
depth in each cylinder, the moist soil extending upwards from 
the bottom. In every cylinder, however, the free moisture was 
practically exhausted from that portion of the soil in which roots 
had been freely developed. This is evident from a comparison of 
figure 29 with Table 22. This very close connection between the 
root distribution and the exhaustion of free water existed in the 
case of the foot sections and still more closely in that of the 
three-inch sections; altho the roots were not separated and 
weighed from the three-inch sections their abundance in these 
sections was recorded at the time of opening the cylinders. 
While the plants all died from want of water, they did so 
with plenty of water just beyond the soil depths in which the 
roots were freely developed. The slight development of roots in 
the moist soil was evidently not sufficient to supply the plants 
with water rapidly enough to maintain life under the extremely 
unfavorable temperature conditions to which they were exposed. 
MILO. 
On February 20, six milo seeds were planted one inch deep 
in the moist soil in each of the 7 cylinders. Three days later the 
plants appeared above the surface. At the end of two weeks 
the number in each cylinder was reduced to the one most vigor- 
ous plant. 
All did about equally well during the first seven weeks after 
planting, altho the plants on the H O and Wauneta soils were 
somewhat the tallest at the end of that time. The plant in the 
Lincoln cylinder died during the second week in April. On all 
the surviving plants heads were appearing by the middle of April 
and by the end of the month all were in bloom and appeared 
fairly vigorous. No tillers formed on any of the plants but 
branches formed on some. On May 6 a branch from 2 to 6 
inches long had appeared from the second axil of each of the 
plants in the Holdrege and Hastings cylinders and from both the 
second and the third axils of the plant in Surface Soil but there 
