12 
Colorado Experiment Station 
should be absent and the chlprids so plentiful in this section is 
not in any measure apparent. I do not even see how the usual 
explanation offered for the formation of calcic chlorid, namely, 
the interaction of calcic sulfate or carbonate and sodic chlorid, 
can apply in the present case. There is no local abundance of 
sodic chiorid in this district that has come to our knowledge 
to account for the prevalence of the calcic and magnesic 
chlorids. 
In the other occurrences of calcic chiorid referred to, there 
is an abundance of these salts, sodic chiorid, calcic sulfate, 
calcic carbonate, sodic sulfate, with nitrates and sodic carbon- 
ate. In the Wellington District, we find comparatively little 
sulfate or other sodic salts associated with the calcic and mag- 
nesic chlorids, though we should expect them if these i;dter 
were formed by the action of sodic chiorid on the respective 
carbonates or sulfates. 
GENERAL CHARACTER OF COUNTRY 
The country with which we are particularly concerned is 
drained by the Box Elder Creek. The country does not present 
an even valley-floor but rather a series of de]iressions sur- 
rounded by ridges which serve as water sheds, cutting off the 
depressions from one another and rendering the drainage ques- 
tion a special one for each individual depression. Tliese basins 
are sometimes quite small. The one in which the first sample 
of soil, No. 2368, was collected, is scarcely one mile in diameter. 
Til ere is no drainage that I have noticed into this basin and 
very little out of it. I think that it could be drained but with 
considerable difficulty. The contour of the country and the 
recent date at which this section was brought under irrigation 
render the question of acciimulation of these salts by trans- 
Iiortation and concentration almost irrelevant. 
How such easily soluble salts as the chlorids and nitrates 
of calcium and magnesium can be accumulated or concentrated 
to the extent that we here find them without the concentration 
of sodic salts, especially the sulfate which is so generally dis- 
tributed, is difficult to understand. The universal presence of 
our ordinary alkalis, which are mixtures of calcic, magnesic and 
sodic sulfates, with chlorids and carbonates Tery subordinate, 
shows that our whole country is one big example of the concen- 
tration of the sulfates. 
COMPOSITION OF ALKALIS IN THIS SECTION 
It may serve a purpose if we give analyses to present these 
variations and to show that the peculiar composition of these 
