28 o 
Review. 
REVIEW. 
THE SALTON SEA: A STUDY OF THE GEOGRAPHY, 
THE GEOLOGY, THE FLORISTICS, AND THE 
ECOLOGY OF A DESERT BASIN. 
By D. T. MacDougal and Collaborators. Washington: Carnegie 
Institution, Publication No. 193, 1914; pp. ix and 182; 
32 collotype plates. 
HIS sumptuous volume contains the results of an elaborate 
1 piece of co-operative research undertaken by the workers at 
the Desert Laboratory, Tucson, and carried on systematically since 
1907. Brief interim reports of progress made in various branches 
have been published in the annual reports of the Director of the 
Laboratory, Dr. D. T. MacDougal, and now we have a detailed 
account, illustrated by numerous fine plates, of the results obtained 
by the investigation from various points of view of the phenomena 
presented by a desert basin which has been the scene of alternate 
submergence and desiccation. 
The Cahuilla Basin, lying to the west of the lower (southern) 
part of the main delta of the Colorado River, was in Tertiary times 
cut off by this delta from the free access of the sea and so became 
an inland lake (Lake Cahuilla) of salt or brackish water. The 
lake-bed, called the Salton Sink, has its upper margin about 20 
feet above mean tide-level, while its lowest point, now beneath the 
water of the present lake (Salton Sea), is 280 feet below this level. 
On either hand of the Sink, which is oblong in outline (about 80 
miles long and 30 miles in greatest width), there rise arid and sun- 
scorched low mountains, whose slopes and waterless canons bear a 
scanty but interesting vegetation—not dealt with in this work. 
The Sink is practically a level plain, everywhere exposed to equal 
insolation, with no irregularities of surface serving to vary the 
effects of sun and wind, with a uniform temperature and uniform 
deficiency of atmospheric humidity and precipitation (average 2-74 
inches, but varying from 7 - l inch to 0-01 inch per annum during 36 
years). The ancient lake which originally filled the Sink had almost 
or entirely disappeared by evaporation, leaving a series of beach¬ 
lines, but during 1905 and 1906 the cutting of canals and the 
resulting unforseen escape from control of the Colorado River- 
water resulted in a partial reflooding of the basin and the formation 
of the Salton Sea. The body of water which threatened the 
restoration of the former lake-conditions had in 1907 attained an 
area of over 400 square miles, with a maximum depth of 80 feet, 
submerging railway stations and necessitating the removal of the 
Southern Pacific railway-track for 67 miles to a higher level. But 
in that year the engineers in charge stopped the deluge by re¬ 
diverting the escaped waters of the Colorado River to the Gulf of 
